He spoke in the tone one uses to jest over bygone sadness.  Emily made no verbal answer, but walked along by his side.

‘You still have your old habits,’ he said, casting an eye at the book.  ‘Are your tastes still the same, I wonder?’

‘It is Dante,’ she replied.

The name brought another to Wilfrid’s consciousness; he averted his eyes for a moment, but spoke again without much delay.

’Still faithful to the great names.  This is a lovely place to make one’s study.  Were you here when the chestnuts flowered?’

‘Yes, once or twice.’

‘I did not see them this year.  And you have been walking here so often,’ he added, wondering again, half to himself.  ’I have been to Teddington several times lately, but only today came into the park.’

‘I have not been here for a month,’ Emily said, speaking at length with more case.  The shock had affected her physically more than she had allowed to be seen; it was only now that her voice was perfectly at her command.  Her face remained grave, but she spoke in a tone free from suggestion of melancholy.  ’I teach in a school, and to-day there is a holiday.’

‘Do you live at the school?’

‘No.  I have my own lodgings.’

He was on the point of asking whether Mrs. Baxendale knew she was in London, but it seemed better to suppress the question.

‘Have you been there long?’ he asked instead.

‘Half a year.’

As he kept silence, Emily continued with a question, the first she had put.

‘What have you chosen for your life’s work?’

Wilfrid could not overcome the tendency of blood to his cheeks.  He was more than half ashamed to tell her the truth.

‘You will laugh at me,’ he said.  ‘I am in Parliament.’

‘You are?  I never see newspapers.’

She added it as if to excuse herself for not being aware of his public activity.

‘Oh, I am still far from being a subject of leading-articles,’ Wilfrid exclaimed.  ’Indeed, I gave you no answer to your question.  My life’s work is non-existent.  All my old plans have come to nothing, and I have formed no new ones, no serious plans.  My life will be a failure, I suppose.’

‘But you aim at success in politics?’

‘I suppose so.  I was thinking of the other things we used to speak of.’

Emily hazarded a glance at him, as if to examine him again in this new light.

‘You used to say,’ she continued, ’that you felt in many ways suited for a political life.’

’Did I?  You mean at home, when I talked in a foolish way.  It was not my serious thought.  I never said it to you.’

She murmured a ‘No.’  They walked on in silence.

‘You didn’t read Italian then,’ Wilfrid said.  ’You, I feel sure, have not wasted your time.  How much you must have read since we talked over our favourite authors.’

‘I have tried to keep up the habit of study,’ Emily replied, unaffectedly, ‘but of course most of my time is occupied in teaching.’