She hesitated again, and I said, “That means you have been looking into the matter of charity.”

She gave me a bright glance.  “How you understand things!” she exclaimed.

“It is possible,” I replied, “to know modern society so well that when you meet certain causes you know what results to look for.”

“I wish you’d explain to me why charity doesn’t do any good!”

“It would mean a lecture on the competitive wage-system,” I laughed—­” too serious a matter for a drive!”

This may have seemed shirking on my part.  But here I was, wrapped in luxurious furs, rolling gloriously through the park at twilight on a brilliant autumn evening; and the confiscation of property seems so much more startling a proposition when you are in immediate contact with it!  This principle, which explains the “opportunism” of Socialist cabinet-ministers and Labour M.P.s may be used to account for the sudden resolve which I had taken, that for this afternoon at least Mrs. Douglas van Tuiver should not discover that I was either a divorced woman, or a soap-box orator of the revolution.

9.  Sylvia, in that first conversation, told me much about herself that she did not know she was telling.  I became fairly certain, for instance, that she had not married Mr. Douglas van Tuiver for love.  The young girl who has so married does not suffer from ennui in the first year, nor does she find her happiness depending upon her ability to solve the problem of charity in connection with her husband’s wealth.

She would have ridden and talked longer, she said, but for a dinner engagement.  She asked me to call on her, and I promised to come some morning, as soon as she set a day.  When the car drew up before the door of her home, I thought of my first ride about the city in the “rubber-neck wagon,” and how I had stared when the lecturer pointed out this mansion.  We, the passengers, had thrilled as one soul, imagining the wonderful life which must go on behind those massive portals, the treasures outshining the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, which required those thick, bronze bars for their protection.  And here was the mistress of all the splendour, inviting me to come and see it from within!

She wanted to send me home in the car, but I would not have that, on account of the push-cart men and the babies in my street; I got out and walked—­my heart beating fast, my blood leaping with exultation.  I reached home, and there on the bureau was the picture—­but behold, how changed!  It was become a miracle of the art of colour-photography; its hair was golden, its eyes a wonderful red-brown, its cheeks aglow with the radiance of youth!  And yet more amazing, the picture spoke!  It spoke with the most delicious of Southern drawls—­referring to the “repo’t” of my child-labour committee, shivering at the cold and bidding me pull the “fu-uzz” up round me.  And when I told funny stories about the Italians and the Hebrews of my tenement-neighbourhood, it broke into silvery laughter, and cried:  “Oh, de-ah me!  How que-ah!” Little had I dreamed, when I left that picture in the morning, what a miracle was to be wrought upon it.