The New Machiavelli

we dined with Villiers, and the St. Pancras Vestry, where we heard Shaw speaking. I was full of plans and so was she of the way in which we were to live and work. We were to pay back in public service whatever excess of wealth beyond his merits old Seddon's economic advantage had won for him from the toiling people in the potteries. The end of the Boer War was so recent that that blessed word "efficiency" echoed still in people's minds and thoughts. Lord Roseberry in a memorable oration had put it into the heads of the big outer public, but the Baileys with a certain show of justice claimed to have set it going in the channels that to

l November at Venice, where chiefly we spent our honeymoon, we turned over and over again and discus

s as the sky above, a mirror on which rows of posts and distant black high-stemmed, swan-necked boats with their minutely clear swinging gondoliers, float aerially. Remote and low before us rises the little tower of our destination. Our

be something priggish in a meticulous discipline, but otherwise it is so easy to slip into indolent habits-and to be distracted from one's purpose. The country, the world, wants men to serve its constru

," she says, "ti

imply modest, it looks so foolish at times to take one's s

my words wi

do great thi

OW yo

e's life upon one main end. We have to plan our

s softly, "we ought

my. "I WANT to give e

s passage of hearse-black gondolas, for the horrible steam launch had not yet ruined Venice, the stilled magnificences of the depopulated lagoons, the universal autumn, made me feel altogether in recess from the teeming uproars of reality. There was not a dozen people all told, no Americans and scarcely any English, to dine in the big cavern of a dining-room,

at I should be very watchful not to shock or distress Margaret or press the sensuous note. Our love-making had much of the tepid smoothness of the lagoons. We talked in delicate innuendo of what should be glorious freedoms. Margaret had missed Verona and Venice in her previous Italian journey-fear of the mosquito had

an see her now, her long body drooping a little forward, her sweet face upraised to some discovered familiar masterpiece and shining with a delicate enthusiasm.

She did not simply and naturally look for beauty but she had been incited to look for it at school, and took perhaps a keener interest in books and lectures and all the organisation of beautiful things than she did in beauty itself; she fou

een us that should have seemed m

busy all the time with such things as a comparison of Venice and its nearest modern equivalent, New York, with

comprehensive generalisation behind a thousand questions, like the sky or England. The judgments and understandings that had worked when she was, so to speak, miles away from my life, had now to be altogether revised. Trifling things

nlit arches and domes of Saint Mark's. Then perhaps we would stroll on the Piazzetta, or go out into the sunset in a gondola. Margaret became very interested in the shops that abound under the colonnades and decided at last to make an extensive purchase of table glass. "These things," she said, "are quite beautiful, and far cheaper than anything but the

stimulating. I nearly wrote to the former paper one day in answer to a letter by Lord Grimthorpe-I forget now upon what point. I chafed secretly against this life of tranquil appreciations more and more. I found my attit

out into the night and prowled for a long time through the narrow streets, smokin

said; "this is all very

id with a faint su

ot a sort of feeling-I've never had i

r!" she

horses, climb mountains, ta

ed me tho

DO somethin

w

s go away from here soon-and walk

ms to be no exercise

here som

Lido." And we tried that, but the long stretch of beach fatigued Marga

eir monastery at Saint Lazzaro, and returned towards sundown. We fell into silence.

k to London,"

at me with sur

, you know," I said, sticking to

ome seconds. "I had

, and took her hand. "Sud

ere is so much to be done," I

e lagoon and at last sighed, like one

has been just With You-the time of my life. It's a pity such things must end. But the world is calling you, dear.... I ought n

ed that on the spur of the moment I relent