might find a pleasant oasis or two by the way. An apparently complete frankness about their domestic relations was also the rule in this society. People talked about their wives or husbands as amusingly as they could, and quite without sentiment. The pose of the successful ones was that they were simple good friends, and didn't interfere with one another. Behind this mask, which Basil and Teresa assumed also, went on, no doubt, many a drama like their own; and many a secret believer in the myth struggled and strove to reach what he considered to be real waters, spreading cool and peaceful, and real protection from the glaring, grinding world. Peace was, perhaps, not to be hoped for in the relation of two civilised and youthful people who had the ideal of freedom and enjoyment. The world was too much with them for any real seclusion of spirit to be possible. But they had the ever-present sense of life, an unfailing interest in one another. They might quarrel, but they were never dull, and neither had as yet a need for any other one person. They had days of perfect, simple happiness, when material difficulties were ignored, and their real relation seemed the only thing that mattered; days of frank, wordly companionship, when they talked frivolously of serious things, and a light way of taking the world made it all gay and amusing. And they had their black days, when all went wrong, when
