 about my--what d'ye call it?  Perhaps I've not got one."
    "You're bound to have one, but it may be such a terrible colour that no one dares mention it."
    "Tell me, though, Miss Schlegel, do you really believe in the supernatural and all that?"
    "Too difficult a question."
    "Why's that?  Gruyère or Stilton?"
    "Gruyère, please."
    "Better have Stilton."
    "Stilton.  Because, though I don't believe in auras, and think Theosophy's only a halfway-house--"
    "--Yet there may be something in it all the same," he concluded, with a frown.
    "Not even that.  It may be halfway in the wrong direction.  I can't explain.  I don't believe in all these fads, and yet I don't like saying that I don't believe in them."
    He seemed unsatisfied, and said: "So you wouldn't give me your word that you don't hold with astral bodies and all the rest of it?"
    "I could," said Margaret, surprised that the point was of any importance to him.  "Indeed, I will.  When I talked about scrubbing my aura, I was only trying to be funny.  But why do you want this settled?"
    "I don't know."
    "Now, Mr. Wilcox, you do know."
    "Yes, I am," "No, you're not," burst from the lovers opposite.  Margaret was silent for a moment, and then changed the subject.
    "How's your house?"
    "Much the same as when you honoured it last week."
    "I don't mean Ducie Street.  Howards End, of course."
    "Why 'of course'?"
    "Can't you turn out your tenant and let it to us?  We're nearly demented."
    "Let me think.  I wish I could help you.  But I thought you wanted to be in town.  One bit of advice: fix your district, then fix your price, and then don't budge.  That's how I got both Ducie Street and Oniton.  I said to myself, 'I mean to be exactly here,' and I was, and Oniton's a place in a thousand."
    "But I do budge.  Gentlemen seem to mesmerize houses--cow them with an
