It came to me in the small hours that the real moral touchstone for
this great doubting of mind was Marion. I lay composing statements of
my problem and imagined myself delivering them to her--and she,
goddess-like and beautiful; giving her fine, simply-worded judgment.

"You see, it's just to give one's self over to the Capitalistic System,"
I imagined myself saying in good Socialist jargon; "it's surrendering
all one's beliefs. We MAY succeed, we MAY grow rich, but where would the
satisfaction be?"

Then she would say, "No! That wouldn't be right."

"But the alternative is to wait!"

Then suddenly she would become a goddess. She would turn upon me frankly
and nobly, with shining eyes, with arms held out. "No," she would say,
"we love one another. Nothing ignoble shall ever touch us. We love one
another. Why wait to tell each other that, dear? What does it matter
that we are poor and may keep poor?"

But indeed the conversation didn't go at all in that direction. At the
sight of her my nocturnal eloquence became preposterous and all the
moral values altered altogether. I had waited for her outside the door
of the Parsian-robe establishment in Kensington High Street and walked
home with her thence. I remember how she emerged into the warm evening
light and that she wore a brown straw hat that made her, for once not
only beautiful but pretty.

"I like that hat," I said by way of opening; and she smiled her rare