Love in a hut, with water and a crust.’

‘No,’ said Winifred firmly, ’that was not the text.  She believed that the wolf must not be very close to the door behind which love is nestling.’

’Then what did she believe?  In the name of common-sense, Winnie, what did she believe?’

‘She believed,’ said Winnie, her cheek flushing and her eyes brightening as she went on, ’that of all the schemes devised by man’s evil genius to spoil his nature, to make him self-indulgent, and luxurious, and tyrannical, and incapable of understanding what the word “love” means, the scheme of showering great wealth upon him is the most perfect.’

’Ah, yes, yes; the old nonsense.  Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of love.  And in what way did she enlarge upon this most charitable theme?’

’She told me dreadful things about the demoralising power of riches in our time.’

‘Dreadful things!  What were they, Winnie?’

’She told me how insatiable is the greed for pleasure at this time.  She told me that the passion of vanity—­“the greatest of all the human passions,” as she used to say—­has taken the form of money-worship in our time, sapping all the noblest instincts of men and women, and in rich people poisoning even parental affection, making the mother thirst for the pleasures which in old days she would only have tried to win for her child.  She told me stories—­dreadful stories—­about children with expectations of great wealth who watched the poor grey hairs of those who gave them birth, and counted the years and months and days that kept them from the gold which modern society finds to be more precious than honour, family, heroism, genius, and all that was held precious in less materialised times.  She told me a thousand other things of this kind, and when I grew older she put into my hand what has been written on the subject.’

‘Good God!  Has the narrow-minded tomfoolery got a literature?’

Winnie went on with her eloquent account of her aunt’s doctrines, and to my surprise I found that there actually was a literature of the subject.

Winnie’s bright eyes had actually pored over old and long Chartist tracts translated into Welsh, and books on the Christian Socialism of Charles Kingsley, and pamphlets on more’ recent kinds of Socialism.

As she went on I could not help murmuring now and then, ’What surroundings for my Winnie!’

’And the result of all this was, Winnie, that your aunt asked you to promise not to marry a man demoralised by privileges and made contemptible by wealth.’

’That is what she wanted me to promise; but as I have said, I did not.  But I did promise to wait for a year and see what effect wealth would have upon you.’

’Did your aunt not tell you also that the man who marries you can never be unmanned by wealth, because he will know that everything he can give is as dross when set against Winnie’s love and Winnie’s beauty:  Did she not also tell you that?’