Lady Joan went up to her town house at the end of the summer, but her philanthropic campaign was not a success. The field of philanthropy was overcrowded just then with people like herself, who had too little wealth and too much energy to be of any practical use to the great organizers of charity, who never wanted anything from their devotees but subscriptions and obedience; a reformer does not want to be interfered with by a penniless nobody who has independent views concerning his method of reform. And Lady Joan soon found that she was not in a set that troubled itself much about the suffering poor. The people she met in Digby's studio were mostly theoretical Socialists, who complained that the cause of Socialism was being ruined by the enthusiasts who tried to make it work before its principles had been properly disseminated among the people; and amongst her other friends were some who had a small and private charity of their own, but were so jealous of it when they had that she found it impossible to work with them; or else they were quite willing to use her house and her carriage and her time, if she would meekly give them all these without being allowed a voice in the arrangements or a particle of credit for what she did. And she found that as much sweating went on in the administration of charity as its administrators were in the habit of exposing in the slums; she met jaded gentlewomen in the employ of philanthropists, who spent their lives in addressing envelopes at something less than the market price, and footsore secretaries who walked the slums to verify the abuses which their chiefs were to denounce in the newspapers. She had never had a high opinion of philanthropy, but it was considerably lowered by her new experiences of it. She humbly offered to sing a ballad at a people's concert in the East End; but her offer was politely refused on the ground that several of the leading singers of the day had offered their services free for the same concert; and she was asked if she would dance the skirt dance instead, at a titled lady's 'At Home' for another charitable object. Sundry hard-working clergy came to hear of her estimable intentions, and wrote to ask her for subscriptions and to offer her district-visiting in their parishes; but as it was the æsthetic side of philanthropy alone that had attracted her, she declined their offers promptly and with a shudder.