door. Must she go out of the drawing-room with him? She could have cried aloud with self-pity! Kames opened the door and ordered her, with his eyes, to go out before him.

She obeyed and the door was closed-they stood together outside alone.

Maud tried to pull herself together. She even laughed, though there was nothing in the world to laugh at. Kames said nothing, but he put his arm round her.

'You can understand now why nobody who can help it comes to No. 2 Brown Street?' said Maud, pretending to support herself by putting her hand on his arm, but really pushing him away.

Why do you push me away?' demanded Kames swiftly.

He drew her away from the door towards the head of the stairs with an arm that would allow of no resistance.

He was bracing himself to say something-something that was deeply painful to him, and which he said almost harshly as he suddenly turned upon her and looked into her eyes.

There's never been anything between you and Broughton?' Maud's eyes flickered.

'No,' she said.

'Nothing?'

'I've told you,' she answered.

'You've told me,' he replied, and he still waited.

'Nothing. Less than nothing.'

'What do you mean?' he questioned, speaking in his most rapid tone.

'He has never thought of me for a moment,' said Maud. 'How do you know that?'

'I do know it.'

'Then you know that he is interested in another woman?' He had clasped both her arms with his hands, and, looking down into her face, seemed to draw the words from her by sheer insistence.

Maud closed her lips and then opened them, and said 'Stella!' Kames threw back his head. He laughed.

The poor innocent devil!' he said, and he drew Maud on to the head of the stairs.

Maud tried in a feeble way to push his arm from her waist. 'It's hard lines that some of the best fellows in the world make

such fool marriages. These scientific chaps-these philosophers and fellows who work in laboratories-don't know anything about women. Give 'em a plaster figure or a grey goose with a pair of earrings clapped to its head, and it's all one to them till it's too late. Because a saint in the heat of the day succumbs to a glass of beer, it's hard lines that he should be compelled to spend the rest of his life in the taproom.'

'Don't speak in such an insulting way,' burst out Maud, trying to wrench away his hand.

'I'm not insulting you,' he said; 'I wouldn't for the whole world, though I doubt if you could say the same to me.'

He took her head in his hands and held it, looking down at her as if her face was the page of a difficult book.

Maud did not reply; she lowered her eyelids till they were nearly closed, and she knitted her brow and waited to be released.

'A man who loves may be willing to be kicked now and again, provided it is made up for in the proper way; but you're the hardest woman in the world to deal with-harderKames pulled himself up sharply.

Here

You mean, harder than any of the women you have known.' Maud had raised her eyes, and flashed a look of anger at him.

'No, 'pon my honour,' said Kames. 'I wouldn't say such things to you'—a dull red colour coming into his face. 'I'm not an infant, Maud-you know that,' he went on, drawing her close to him; but whatever I have been, I am now at this moment yours absolutely, and shall always be there is no other woman in the world-you are everything to me--everything.'

(To be continued.)

JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN: A PHASE.

I WRITE of a phase,' because it was only for six years that I had any close acquaintance with the late Member for West Birmingham. After the great disruption of 1886 our paths diverged, and since that date I have only met him in the casual intercourse of general society, and that rarely. But it is a pleasure just now to remember that I never had a disagreeable word from him, and, even since the disruption, many kind ones.

I entered Parliament at the General Election of 1880, being just twenty-seven years old. Chamberlain had entered at a by-election in 1876, and was seventeen years my senior. At that time I knew very little about him. After the Liberal defeat at the polls in 1874, he had denounced Gladstone's Election Address, promising to repeal the Income Tax, as the meanest document ever issued by a public man.' He was reported to have said that the Prince of Wales would be received in Birmingham with the same sort of curiosity which would be excited by the Tichborne Claimant. In a debate in 1879 he had referred to Lord Hartington as 'the late leader of the Liberal party.' At the General Election of 1880 Sir William Harcourt described him as having been consecrated by a kind of Apostolic Succession to take the place long occupied by John Bright, as Chief Bogey of the Tory party. But none of these things affected me. I had entered the campaign with the one object of defeating Lord Beaconsfield's Eastern policy, and my sole leader was Gladstone. If only he became Prime Minister, nothing else mattered. When, on the 23rd of April, 1880, he kissed hands, the victory was won.

The formation of the new Cabinet was not a matter of thrilling interest. 'The old familiar faces' turned up in the old familiar places. Dilke was fobbed off with an Under-Secretaryship. Fawcett was disqualified by blindness. Chamberlain was the sole representative of Radicalism in a Cabinet dependent for its existence on Radical support. The victory over Lord Beaconsfield being won, we were turning our thoughts towards those domestic problems which had so long pressed for solution; and Chamberlain, who had taken no great part in the Eastern Question, became interesting, because his presence in a Cabinet stuffed with Whigs seemed to afford our only hope of social reform.

Early in my first session I was introduced to Chamberlain : I cannot remember by whom, but very likely by my staunch friend, Sir George Trevelyan. I was at once and strongly attracted by him. He was wholly free from the stiffness and pomposity which the old hacks of the Liberal Cabinet sedulously cultivated. He received one at once on the footing of comradeship and equality; and he talked with that complete openness which, when displayed by an older to a younger man, is in itself a compliment. But, before I recall his conversation, let me describe his appearance.

He was then forty-three years old, but looked at least ten years younger. Even as late as 1885, when he was in his fiftieth year, I heard him acclaimed by the voice' at a public meeting as the 'Grand Young Man' of the Liberal party. He had the sharply pointed features which we all remember; pale and rather sallow complexion, dark hair, and slight whiskers. The eyeglass and the orchid were conspicuous appendages. The obvious and universal remark was that he resembled Pitt; but the resemblance began and ended with the angle of the nose. Pitt was tall, gaunt, stiff, and supremely dignified. Chamberlain was rather short than tall; not the least dignified; singularly pliant and active. The extreme alertness of look and manner and movement irresistibly suggested the associations of the counter, and Gilbert's

Pushing young particle-
What's the next article?

Threepenny 'bus young man.'

His whole appearance was conspicuously neat and glossy. He looked, to use the common phrase, as if he had just come out of a band-box-but critics said that it was a provincial band-box. He wore his tie in a ring, and displayed his handkerchief outside his frock-coat like a star.

It seems curious, in view of all that has happened since, to remember that Chamberlain played very little part in the Parliament of 1880. From the beginning to the end of that Parliament, Ireland, in one form or another, engrossed the House of Commons; and Chamberlain very rarely intervened in Irish debates. He was more concerned with the affairs of his department-such as bankruptcy and merchant-shipping; and, as they were not of absorbing interest, he seemed to be much more at leisure than most members of the Cabinet. It is, perhaps, due to this circumstance that I enjoyed so much of his society; for in the

lobby and in the tea-room and on the terrace I seem to have been very often in his company; and his hospitality was unbounded. He was a perfect host, receiving his guests with that honest joy which warms more than dinner or wine'; mixing his parties adroitly, and inciting, though never dominating, the conversation. He frankly enjoyed a good dinner. So many of the pleasures of life are illusory,' he once said to me; but a good dinner is a reality; and, by Jove! after such a session as we've been through, I think we deserve it.' In this connection I recall some words which now have a pathetic interest. Knowing that I had never been strong, Chamberlain said to me, with genuine kindness, 'The House of Commons is rather a trying place for the health, but don't let anyone persuade you to take exercise. Exercise was invented by the doctors to bring grist to their mill. They knew that men who went in for exertion would soon come to them as patients. When I was a young man, I believed them, and I constantly suffered from congestive headaches. Now I defy them and am perfectly well. I eat and drink what I like, and as much as I like. I smoke the strongest cigars all day; and the only exercise I take is to walk up to bed. That is quite enough for a man who has worked his brain all day-and I mean to live to a hundred.'

His chief interest and enjoyment always seemed to consist in work, and, rather specially, in the work of organising and controlling political opinion in Birmingham. If he ever needed relaxation, he found it in very simple forms. His love of flowers we all know, and he was fond of collecting black and white furniture. He had some rather elementary views about the arts-architecture for onebut for literature (except French novels, of which he had a large assortment) he had not the slightest feeling. When I first knew him, he rented from Lord Acton a house in Prince's Gate, which, as was natural in a house of Acton's, contained a considerable library. When he left it for Prince's Gardens, I said, 'You will miss the library'; to which he replied, with indescribable emphasis, Library! I don't call that a library. There isn't a single book of reference in it.'

Of course our conversation turned often, though not always, on politics; and, as I joined the Government in 1883, we were officially bound to the support of the same policy. But, in questions outside the official programme, I was a keen supporter of Chamberlain, and his schemes of social reform, as against the fatal laissezfaire which the Whigs regarded as the only safe statesmanship.