your care?" he asked her lightly.

"It has not progressed," she answered; "there are enough mistakes in
it now to occupy Denah for a long time."

He took her basket from her, and she looked at him thoughtfully. He
was just the same as usual, quiet, drawling voice, eyeglass,
everything--she wondered if he were ever different; how he would act,
say, in her circumstances. If they could change bodies, now, and he be
Julia Polkington, with her relations, needs and opportunities, what
would he do? Would he still be impassive, deliberate, equal to all
occasions? Would he find it easy to keep his inviolable laws of
good-breeding and honour, and so forth?

"There is something I should like to ask you," she said suddenly.

"Yes?" he inquired.

"Is it much trouble to you to be honest?"

He was a little surprised, though not so much as he would have been
earlier in their acquaintance. "That," he said, "I expect rather
depends on what you mean by honest. I imagine you don't refer to lying
and stealing, and that sort of thing, since nobody finds it difficult
to avoid them."

"They are not gentlemanly?" she suggested.

"I don't know that I ever looked at it in that way," he said; "or,
indeed, any way. One does not think about those sort of things; one