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the House; it had besieged him clamorously as he passed along the Lobbies amid a of friendly hands and voices; now in the quiet of the deserted Gallery it came home to him with deeper meaning from the eyes of Chilcote's wife.

Without a thought he put out his hands and caught hers. "I couldn't get away," he said. "I'm afraid I'm very late."

With a smile that scattered her tears, Eve looked up. "Are you?" she said, laughing a little. "I don't know what the time is. I scarcely know whether it's night or day."

Still holding one of her hands, he drew her down the stairs; but as they reached the last step, she released her fingers.

"In the carriage!" she said with another little laugh of nervous happiness.

At the foot of the stairs they were besieged. Men whose faces Loder barely knew crowded about him. The intoxication of excitement was still in the air-the instinct that a new force had made itself felt, a new epoch been entered upon, stirred prophetic ally in every mind.

Passing through the enthusiastic concourse of men, they came unexpectedly upon Fraide and Lady Sarah surrounded by a group of friends. The old statesman came forward instantly, and taking Loder's arm, walked with him to Chilcote's waiting brougham. He said little as they slowly made their way to the carriage, but the pressure of his fingers was tense and an unwonted

colour showed in his face. When Eve and Loder had taken their seats, he stepped to the edge of the kerb. They were alone for the moment, and leaning close to the carriage, he put his hand through the open window. In silence he took Eve's fingers and held them in a long, affectionate pressure; then he released them and took Loder's hand.

"Good night, Chilcote!" he said. "You have proved yourself worthy of her! Good night!" He turned quickly and rejoined his waiting friends. In another second the horses had wheeled round, and Eve and Loder were carried swiftly forward into the darkness.

In the great moments of man's life, woman comes before

and after. Some shadow of this truth was in Eve's mind as she lay back in the corner of her seat with closed eyes and parted lips. It seemed that life came to her now for the first time-came in the glad, proud, satisfying tide of things accomplished. This was her hour: and the recognition of it brought the blood to her face in a sudden happy rush. There had been no need to precipitate its coming; it had been ordained from the first. Whether she desired it or no, whether she strove to draw it nearer or strove to ward it off, its coming had been inevitable. She opened her eyes suddenly and looked out into the darknessthe darkness throbbing with multitudes of lives, all awaiting, all desiring fulfilment. was no longer lonely, no longer aloof; she was kin with all this

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pitiful, admirable, sinning, loving humanity. Again tears of pride and happiness filled her eyes. Then suddenly the thing she had waited for came to pass.

Loder leant close to her. She was conscious of his nearer presence, of his strong, masterful personality. With a thrill that caught her breath, she felt his arm about her shoulder and heard the sound of his voice.

"Eve," he said, "I love you. Do you understand? I love you." And drawing her close to him, he bent and kissed her.

With Loder, to do was to do fully. When he gave, he gave generously; when he swept aside a barrier he left no stone standing. He had been slow to recognise his capacitiesslower still to recognise his feelings. But now that the knowledge came, he received it openly. In this matter of newly comprehended love he gave no thought to either past or future. That they loved and were alone, was all he knew or questioned. She was as much Eve the though they were together in the primeval garden; and in this spirit he claimed her.

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He neither spoke nor behaved extravagantly in that great moment of comprehension. He acted quietly, with the completeness of purpose that he gave to everything. He had found a new capacity within himself, and he was strong enough to dread no weakness in displaying it.

Holding her close to him, he repeated his declaration again

and again, as though repetition ratified it. He found no need to question her feeling for him-he had divined it in a flash of inspiration as she stood waiting in the doorway of the Gallery; but his own surrender was a different matter.

As the carriage passed round the corner of Whitehall and dipped into the traffic of Piccadilly he bent down again till her soft hair brushed his face; and the warm personal contact, the slight fresh smell of violets so suggestive of her presence, stirred him afresh.

"Eve," he said vehemently, "do you understand? Do you know that I have loved you always-from the very first?" As he said it, he bent still nearer, kissing her lips, her forehead, her hair.

At the same moment the horses slackened speed and then stopped, arrested by one of the temporary blocks that so often occur in the traffic of Piccadilly Circus.

Loder, preoccupied with his own feelings, scarcely noticed the halt, but Eve drew away from him laughing.

"You mustn't!" she said softly. "Look!"

The carriage had stopped beside one of the small islands that intersect the place; a group of pedestrians were crowded upon it, under the light of the electric lampwayfarers who, like themselves, were awaiting a passage. Loder took a cursory glance at them, then turned back to Eve.

"What are they, after all, but men and women?" he

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"They'd understand every one of them." He laughed in his turn; nevertheless he withdrew his arm. Her feminine thought for conventionalities appealed to him. It was an acknowledgment of dependency.

For a while they sat silent, the light of the street lamp flickering through the glass of the window, the hum of voices and traffic coming to them in a continuous rise and fall of sound. At first the position was interesting; then, as the seconds followed each other, it gradually became irksome. Loder, watching the varying expressions of Eve's face, grew impatient of the delay, grew suddenly eager to be alone again in the fragrant dark

ness.

Impelled by the desire, he leant forward and opened the window.

"Let's find the meaning of this," he said. "Is there nobody to regulate the traffic." As he spoke he half rose and leant out of the window. There was a touch of imperious annoyance in his manner. Fresh from the realisation of power, there was something irksome in this commonplace check to his desires.

carriage with the intention of looking onward towards the cause of the delay; instead, by that magnetic attraction that undoubtedly exists, he looked directly in front of him at the group of people waiting on the little island-at one man who leant against the lamp-post in an attitude of apathy,—a man with a pallid unshaven face and lustreless eyes, who wore a cap drawn low over his forehead.

He looked at this man, and the man saw and returned his glance. For a space that

seemed interminable they held each other's eyes; then very slowly Loder drew back into the carriage.

As he dropped into his seat, Eve glanced at him anxiously. "John," she said, "has anything happened? You look

ill."

He turned to her and tried to smile.

"It's nothing!" he said. "Nothing to worry about." He spoke quickly, but his voice had suddenly become flat. All the command, all the domination, had dropped away from it.

Eve bent close to him, her face lighting up with anxious tenderness. "It was the excitement," she said, "the strain of to-night."

He looked up at her; but he made no attempt to press the fingers that clasped his own.

"Isn't it possible to get out of this?" Eve heard him call to the coachman. Then she heard no more. He had leant out of the and the reaction."

"Yes," he said. "It was the excitement of to-night

(To be continued.)

A PLEA FOR LANDLORDS.

BY ROBERT FARQUHARSON, M.P.

LANDLORDS are often at tacked, though rarely defended, and perhaps we ought to start with an apologia pro vita sua. Are they really a set of lazy, oppressive, land-grabbing harpies, who are too poor or too idle to do their duty to their estates, and who suck out everything they can get, and give back no sufficient equivalent in return?

Is there any use for them in the economy of the universe, and would it not be better for every one concerned if they were cleared off the face of the earth, and the State summoned to our aid as man in possession?

Now, if we were asked to construct a new world or to regenerate the old, private property in land could not be defended as an ideal arrangement. Even Adam enjoyed no fixity of tenure, and the proposition is both natural and plausible that, as every man is equal in the eye of the law, he is therefore entitled to a fair share of the fundamental raw material of industry, and should start life as the owner of a moderate bit of soil, which he can cultivate for his frugal wants. But we must take things as we find them, and try to maintain the sound constitutional integrity of the body politic with due regard to progress and reform, and that being so, we must accept

the settled existence in our midst of landed proprietors, many of whom have bought their estates, embarked capital heavily in their improvement, and are therefore too firmly established in their holdings, if not necessarily in popular estimation, to be removed, save by voluntary ejectment.

It hardly seems necessary to say much about land nationalism.

This was strenuously advocated some years ago by the late Mr Henry George, but his ineffective platform appearances did little more than dilute to watery point his plausible book. After being heckled clean off the platform in the North of Scotland, he retreated to the more congenial soil of America, where an abundant harvest usually rewards the exertions of the stump orator. And the final blow to his panacea for all the woes of mankind was administered by Mr Bradlaugh, a Radical if there ever was one, who knew like Disraeli the value of epigrammatic phrases. When he was asked if he was in favour of the nationalism of the land, he replied, "No; because we can only do it in two ways, by buying it or by stealing it; and," he continued, "I don't approve of stealing it, and we can't afford to buy it." And following this up a little farther, Mr Samuel Smith has clearly shown that

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have no time to enter; but this much is certain, that we should not envy the lot of tenants who had to sit under the hard-and-fast sway of a government department.

Public bodies, as a rule, are notoriously deficient in the anatomical structure known as bowels of compassion, and the annual visit of the rent-collector, with his strict official orders to allow no short measure to his pound of flesh, would be a poor exchange for the semi-festive occasion when the landlord or his agent sits at the receipt of custom, and when a full stomach may provide some solace for an empty pocket. Peasant proprietorship stands, however, on much firmer ground, and many arguments, economic and sentimental, can be used in its favour.

Arthur Young's oracular saying, that the magic of property turns sand into gold, has been quoted threadbare, but it still holds the field among our classical obiter dicta, for it expresses the undoubted

fact that a man will work harder for himself than for other people, and will get all he can out of his land, and treat it with loving care, when he knows that the profits of his toil slip inevitably and without deduction into his own trouser-pocket.

The condition of the Highland crofter has enormously improved since he has been granted fixity of tenure and a fair judicial rent; but the most conspicuous evidence of successful peasant proprietorship comes from Ireland, where Mr Bailey, legal assistant commissioner under the Land Purchase (Ireland) Acts, has furnished a report of their working. This able and experienced observer tells us that the standard of comfort has increased, better clothing and greater neatness are seen among the people. According to the evidence of a parish priest, "Purchase has brought peace. The people are more sober and more hopeful as to their future prospects. The Constabulary say that before purchase they found the people most troublesome, but now all is changed, and quietness and order reign instead." "Our inspector, going among them, found a supreme feeling of contentment at their altered position, and complete satisfaction with their present treatment."

They live better now in every way, their food is more varied and nourishing, the cow and the pig no longer share the meagre comforts of the dwelling, the land is better cultivated, improvements are

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