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the six
years we've been married, you've never told me what you meant to do
with your life?"
"With my life? What's the use? It's finished now." Sophie looked up
quickly from the Bay of Naples. "As far as my business goes, I shall
have to live on my rents like that architect at San Moritz."
"You'll get better if you don't worry; and even if it rakes time, there are
worse things than--How much have you?"
"Between four and five million. But it isn't the money. You know it
isn't. It's the principle. How could you respect me? You never did, the
first year after we married, till I went to work like the others. Our
tradition and upbringing are against it. We can't accept those ideals."
"Well, I suppose I married you for some sort of ideal," she answered,
and they returned to their forty-third hotel.
In England they missed the alien tongues of Continental streets that
reminded them of their own polyglot cities. In England all men spoke
one tongue, speciously like American to the ear, but on
cross-examination unintelligible.,
"Ah, but you have not seen England," said a lady with iron-grey hair.

They had met her in Vienna, Bayreuth, and Florence, and were grateful
to find her again at Claridge's, for she commanded situations, and knew
where prescriptions are most carefully made up. "You ought to take an
interest in the home of our ancestors as I do."
"I've tried for a week, Mrs. Shonts," said Sophie, "but I never get any
further than tipping German waiters."
"These men are not the true type," Mrs. Shouts went on. "I know where
you should go."
Chapin pricked up his ears, anxious to run anywhere from the streets on
which quick men, something of his kidney, did the business denied to
him.
"We hear and we obey, Mrs. Shonts," said Sophie, feeling his unrest as
he drank the loathed British tea.
Mrs. Shonts smiled, and took them in hand. She wrote widely and
telegraphed far on their behalf till, armed with her letter of introduction,
she drove them into that wilderness which is reached from an ash-barrel
of a station called Charing Cross. They were to go to Rockett's--the
farm of one Cloke, in the southern counties--where, she assured them,
they would meet the genuine England of folklore and song.
Rocketts they found after some hours, four miles from a station, and, so
far as they could, judge in the bumpy darkness, twice as many from a
road. Trees, kine, and the outlines of barns showed shadowy about
them when they alighted, and Mr. and Mrs. Cloke, at the open door of a
deep stone-floored kitchen, made them shyly welcome. They lay in an
attic beneath a wavy whitewashed ceiling, and, because it rained, a
wood fire was made in an iron basket on a brick hearth, and they fell
asleep to the chirping of mice and the whimper of flames.
When they woke it was a fair day, full of the noises, of birds, the smell
of box lavender, and fried bacon, mixed with an elemental smell they
had never met before.
"This," said Sophie, nearly pushing out the thin casement in an attempt
to see round the, corner, " is--what did the hack-cabman say to the
railway porter about my trunk--'quite on the top?'"
"No; 'a little bit of all right.' I feel farther away from anywhere than I've
ever felt in my life. We must find out where the telegraph office is."
"Who cares?" said Sophie, wandering about, hairbrush in hand, to
admire the illustrated weekly pictures pasted on door and cupboard.

But there was no rest for the alien soul till he had made sure of the
telegraph office. He asked the Clokes' daughter, laying breakfast, while
Sophie plunged her face in the lavender bush outside the low window.
"Go to the stile a-top o' the Barn field," said Mary, "and look across
Pardons to the next spire. It's directly under. You can't miss it--not if
you keep to the footpath. My sister's the telegraphist there. But you're
in the three-mile radius, sir. The boy delivers telegrams directly to this
door from Pardons village."
"One has to take a good deal on trust in this country," he murmured.
Sophie looked at the close turf, scarred only with last night's wheels, at
two ruts which wound round a rickyard, and at the circle of still orchard
about the half-timbered house.
"What's the matter with it?" she said. "Telegrams delivered to the Vale
of Avalon, of course," and she beckoned in an earnest-eyed hound of
engaging manners and no engagements, who answered, at times, to the
name of Rambler. He led them, after breakfast, to the rise behind the
house where the stile stood against the skyline, and,