She looked up--past him--out of the window. All the youthfulness
seemed to have left her face, but he did not appear to see that.

"How can you do so?"

"Well, I can work. I suppose I must be good for something--a
bountiful Providence must surely have seen to that. The difficulty
is to find out what it intends me for. We are not called in the
night nowadays to a special mission--we have to find it out for
ourselves."

"Do you know what I should like you to be?" she said, with a bright
smile and one of those sudden descents into shallowness which he
appeared to like.

"What?"

"A politician."

"Then I shall be a politician," he answered, with loverlike
promptness.

"That would be very nice," she said; and the castles she at once
began to build were not entirely aerial in their structure.

This was not a new idea. They had talked of politics before as a
possible career for himself. They had moved in a circle where
politics and politicians held a first place--a circle removed above
the glamour of art, and wherein Bohemianism was not reckoned an