"The great big balloon," he said to his editor when he was told of what the actor-knight had said over the telephone. "My Lord, when I hear him spouting blank verse through his nose!..."

"That's all very fine," the editor retorted ruefully, "but your criticism's doing us a lot of harm. Jefferson of the Torch Theatre cancelled his advertisement the day after your notice of his new play appeared!"

"Ridiculous ass!" said Gilbert.

"Well, if you say his play's the worst that's ever been put on any stage, what do you expect him to do? Fall on your neck and say, 'Bless you, brother!'? You might try to be kinder to them, Farlow, and do for the love of God remember the advertisement manager. If you could get the human note in your stuff!..."

"The what?"

"The human note. I'm a great believer in the human note."

Gilbert left the office as quickly as he could and went home. He came into the dining-room where the others were already seated at their meal.

"You're late again, Gilbert," said Roger. "Hand over your sixpence!"

Roger, who was never late for anything, had instituted a system of fines for those who were late for meals. The fine for unpunctuality at dinner was sixpence.

"I haven't got a tanner, damn it," Gilbert snapped, "and I'm looking for the human note. That's why I'm late. My heavenly father, I'm hungry! What is there?"

"Sixpence for being late for dinner," said Roger quietly, "and tuppence for blasphemy!"

He entered the amounts in the "Ledger," and then returned to his seat. "You already owe six and threepence," he said, as he sat down, "and this evening's fines bring it up to six and elevenpence. You ought to pay something on account, Gilbert!..."

"Pass the potatoes and don't bleat so much!" said Gilbert. "Look here, Quinny," he said as he helped himself to the potatoes, "what's the human note, and don't you think tuppence is too much for blasphemy?"

"Ask Ninian," Henry answered. "He knows all about humanity!"

"No, he doesn't. Bally mechanic! Aren't you, Ninian? Aren't you a damn little mechanic with a screw-driver for a soul!..."

"You'll get a punch on the jaw in a minute, young fellow me lad!" Ninian exclaimed, leaning over the table and slapping Gilbert on the cheek.

"Fined fourpence for threat of physical violence and ninepence for executing the same," Roger murmured. "I'll enter it presently."

"Somebody should slay Roger," Gilbert said. "Somebody should take hold of his neat little neck and wring it!..."

They finished their meal and sat back in their chairs, smoking and chattering.

"What's all this about the human note, Gilbert?" Henry asked, and Gilbert explained what had happened to him in the editor's room. "I stopped a bobby in the Strand and asked him about it," he said, "but he told me to move on. You ought to know what the human note is, Quinny. You're a novelist, and novelists are supposed to know everything nowadays!"

He did not wait for Henry to explain the meaning of the human note. "I know what Dilton means by it," he said. "When he talks of the human note he means the greasy touch!"

"Slop in fact!" said Roger.

"That's it. Slop! My God, these journalists do love to splash about in their emotions. They can't mention the North Pole without gulping in their throats. Dilton gave me an example of the human note. There was a bye-election in the East End the other day and one of the candidates put his unfortunate infants into 'pearlies' and hawked them about the constituency in a costermonger's barrow, carrying a notice with 'Vote for Our Daddy!' on it. Dilton damned near blubbed when he told me about it!"

"Rage?" said Henry.

"Rage!" Gilbert exclaimed. "Good Lord, no! The man was moved, touched!... He blew his nose hard, and then told me that one touch of nature makes the whole world kin! I'm damned if he didn't write a leading article about it ... and they give him a couple of thousand a year for organising sniffs for the million. All over England, I suppose there were people snivelling over those brats and telling each other that one touch of nature makes the whole world kin!... Oof! gimme the whisky, somebody, for the love of the Lordy God! I want to be sick when I think of the human note!"

"Well, of course," said Roger, "the slop is there, and it's no good getting angry about it. What I want is a Party that won't deal in it. I've always believed that the mob likes an honest man, even if it does call him a Prig, and I'm perfectly certain that when a Prig gets let down by the mob it's because in some subconscious way it knows he's only pretending to be honest ... unless, of course, it's gone off its head with passion of some sort: Boer war jingoism and that kind of thing. And my notion of a member of parliament is a man who represents some degree of general feeling. If he doesn't represent that general feeling he can only do one of two things: try to convert the general opinion to his point of view or else, if he can't convert it, tell it he'll be damned if he'll represent it any longer. That's the attitude I shall adopt in the House!..."

But Gilbert thought that this was a dangerous attitude to maintain.

"If you maintain it too long, you'll never get an office," he said, "and so the only work you'll be able to do will be critical work: you'll never get a chance to do anything constructive; and if you let the Government nobble you, and give you an Under Secretaryship the moment they see you getting dangerous, then you're done for. And anyhow, I don't believe in independent members of parliament. A certain number of sheep are necessary in every organisation, in parliament as much as anywhere else. It would be absolutely impossible to carry on Government if the whole six hundred and seventy members of parliament were as clever and as independent as Lord Hugh Cecil. You must have sheep and lots of 'em!..."

"But they needn't be dead sheep," said Roger. "They needn't be mutton, need they?"

"No, they needn't be mutton, but they must be sheep," Gilbert replied.

"All the politicians I've ever met," said Ninian, "were like New Zealand lamb ... frozen!"

Gilbert leaped on him and slapped his back, capsizing him on to the floor. "Ninian, my son," he said, "that's a good line. Do you mind if I put it in my comedy. It doesn't matter whether you do or not, but I'd like your consent."

"Don't be an old ass," said Ninian.

"Can I use that line about the New Zealand lamb?..."

"Yes, yes ... any damn thing ... only get off my chest! You're ... you're squeezing the inside out of me. Get up, will you!..."

"I'm really quite comfortable, thanks, Ninian. If it weren't for this whacking big bone here!..."

He did not complete the sentence, for Ninian, with a heaving effort, threw him on to the floor, where they scrambled and punched each other....

"There is a fine of eighteenpence," said Roger, "for disorderly conduct. I'll just enter it against you both!"

The combatants rose and routed Roger, and when they had disposed of him, Ninian agreed to let Gilbert use his line about the frozen meat. "I shall expect you to put a note in the programme that the epigram in the second act was supplied by Mr. Ninian Graham," he said.

"The epigram!" Gilbert exclaimed. "The epigram!"

"Why, will there be any more?" said Ninian innocently.

Hostilities thereupon broke out again.

4

They sat up late that night talking of themselves and of England and public affairs. Roger was interested in Trade Unions, and he lamented the fact that the Tories had allowed an alliance to be formed between Labour and Liberalism. "Ask any workman you meet in the street whether he'd rather work for a Liberal or a Tory, and I bet you what you like, the chances are that he'll plump for the Tory. His experience is that the Tory's the better employer, and the reason why that's so is that the Liberal conducts his business on principles, whereas the Tory conducts his on instincts. In principle, the Liberal concedes most things to the workman, but in practice he doesn't: in principle, the Tory concedes nothing to the workman, but in practice he treats him decently. The workman knows that, but the fool goes and votes for the Liberal, and the fool of a Tory lets him!... You know," he went on, "this Trade Union movement has got on to wrong lines altogether. Their chief function seems to be to protect their members from ... well, from being cheated. That's what it comes to. I don't blame 'em. They've had to behave like that. I don't think any one can read Webb's 'Industrial Democracy' and 'The History of Trade Unionism' without feeling that, on the whole, employers have been rather caddish to workmen ... so I don't blame the Unions for making so much fuss about their rights. But I'd like to see them making as much fuss about the quality of the work done by their members. That's their real function. It isn't enough to keep up the standard of wages and of conditions of employment—they ought also to keep up the standard of work!"

This led them into a wrangle about the responsibility for the blame for this indifference to quality of work.

"I suppose," said Roger, "employers and employed are to blame. I think myself it's the result of a world tendency towards hustle ... to get the thing done as quickly as possible without regard to the quality of it. I suppose a modern contractor would break his heart if he were asked to spend his lifetime on one cathedral ... but people were proud to do that in the Middle Ages. We'd build half a dozen cathedrals while a Middle Ages man was decorating a gargoyle!"

"Well, we have this comfort," said Ninian, "the modern builder's stuff won't last as long as Westminster Abbey!"

"I hate all this bleat about the Middle Ages," Gilbert exclaimed. "I'm surprised to hear you, Roger, talking like that fat papist, Belloc. One 'ud think to hear you talking that no one ever did shoddy work until the nineteenth century, but Christopher Wren let a lot of shoddy stuff into St. Paul's Cathedral. There were fraudulent contractors then, and jerry-builders, just as there are now, and there probably always will be people who give a bad return for their wages!..."

"That's why I want to see the Tory Party resuscitated," said Roger. "I want to limit the number of such people and to make every man feel that it's a gentlemanly thing to do your best, whatever your job is, and that payment has nothing whatever to do with the way you do your work!"

The whole industrial system would need re-shaping, the whole social system would need re-shaping, the Empire would need re-shaping.

"This craving for cheapness has cheapened nothing but life," said Roger, "and it brings incalculable trouble with it. I mean, a ha'penny saved now means pounds lost later. Oh, that's a platitude, I know, but we pay no heed to it. I've never been to America, but we know quite well that one of the most serious problems for the Americans is the negro problem. I heard a Rhodes scholar talking about it once. He simply foamed at the mouth. He hadn't any plan for it ... didn't seem to realise that a plan could be made ... and you know they've only got that problem through the greediness of their ancestors. Negroes aren't native to America. The planters wanted cheap labour and so they imported them ... and the end of that business is the Negro Problem!"

"And lynchings and a Civil War in between," Henry murmured. "That's the most hateful part of it ... the killing and the bitterness."

"Great Scott!" said Ninian, "think of all those Yankees killing each other so that niggers might wear spats and top hats and sing coon songs in the music halls!... Damn silly, I call it!"

"We've got to make people believe that it isn't what you get that matters, but what you do," Roger went on. "All this footling squabble between workmen and employers about a farthing an hour more or a farthing an hour less ... isn't decent ... it isn't gentlemanly. Oh, I know very well that the counter-jumper thinks it's very clever to trick a customer out of a ha'penny ... but it doesn't last, that kind of profit. We lost America because we behaved like cads to the colonists, and we'll lose everything if we continue to play the counter-jumper trick. It isn't very popular now to talk about gentlemen ... people sneer at the word ... but I'd rather die like a gentleman than live like a cad ... and that's the spirit I want to see restored to the Tory Party. It's awfully needed in England now!"

They began to lay plans for an Improved Tory Party that included an alliance with Labour and a closer confederation of the colonies, together with a definite understanding with America.

"And what about Ireland?" said Henry.

"Oh, of course, Ireland must have Home Rule and be treated like a colony. Nobody but a fool wants to treat it in any other way!" said Roger.

"There are an awful lot of fools in the world," Gilbert said.

"I know that," Roger retorted, "but need we trouble about them?"

"We've got to get a group of fellows together on much the same principle as the Fabian Society ... no one to be admitted unless he has brains and is willing to work without payment. Look at the work that Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw and all those people did for Socialism for nothing, even paying for it out of their own pockets when they weren't over-flush ... my goodness, if we can only get people with that kind of spirit into our group, we'll mould the world! By the way, we ought to pinch some ideas from the Fabians! We could meet somewhere ... here, to begin with. And when we've got a group of fellows together with some notion of what we all want to do, we can start inviting eminent ones to talk to us ... and heckle the stuffing out of them!"

Gilbert was able to tell them a great deal about the origin of the Fabian Society ... for his father was one of the founders of it ... and he told them how the Society had invited Mr. Haldane to talk to them ... and of the way in which they had fallen on him in the discussion and left all his arguments in shreds when the meeting ended.... "If we can get Balfour or Asquith or some other Eminent Pot here," he said, "and simply argue hell's blazes out of him ... my Lordy God, that 'ud be great!"

"They're not likely to come," said Ninian.

"I don't know. Eminent Ones sometimes do the most unusual things!"

Ninian yawned and stretched his arms. "I move that this House be now adjourned!" he said.

But they ignored his sleepiness, and he would not move away from their company.

"Well, we've settled what our future is to be," said Gilbert.

"What is it to be?" Ninian interrupted, stifling another yawn.

"Weren't you listening? We're to be Improved Tories ... and we're to improve the Universe, so to speak. We've just settled it. All the Old Birds are to be hoofed out of office, and we're to take their places, and I thoroughly approve of that. In my opinion, any man who wants to occupy a place of authority after the age of sixty should be publicly and cruelly pole-axed. I can't stand old men ... they're so cowardly and so obstinate and so conceited!"

"The great thing," said Roger, "is to keep ourselves from sloppiness. We mustn't make fools of ourselves!"

"The principal way in which a man makes a fool of himself," Gilbert added, "is in connexion with the female species. Is that what you mean, Roger?" Roger nodded his head. "Pay attention to that, Ninian," Gilbert went on. "You have a weakness for females, I've noticed!"

Ninian, suddenly forgetting his fatigue, sat up in his seat. "I say, let's jaw about women," he said.

"No," Gilbert replied. "We won't ... not at this hour of the morning!" But, disregarding his decision, he went on, "My view of women is that we all make too much fuss about 'em! Either we damn them excessively or we praise them excessively. They're a cursed nuisance in literature. All the writers seem to think that man was made for woman or woman for man, and they write and write about sex and love as if there weren't other things in the world besides women!"

"I'd like to know what else we were made for?" Henry said.

"We were made to do our jobs," Roger answered. "I believe in what I may call the modified anchorite ... women are too emotional and get between a man and his work. Love is an excellent thing ... excellent ... but there are other things!..."

"What else is there?" Henry demanded almost crossly. He felt vaguely stirred by what was being said, vaguely antagonistic to it.

"Oh, lots of things," Roger answered. "Fighting for your place, moving multitudes to do your will ... oh, lots of things!"

Gilbert had read some of Henry's novel, and he now began to talk about it.

"You turn on the Slop-tap too often," he said. "Quinny, my son, you're a clever little chap, but you're frightfully sloppy. I've read a lot more of your novel...."

"Yes?" said Henry, nervously anxious to hear his criticism.

"Slop!" Gilbert continued. "Just slop, Quinny! Women aren't like lumps of dough that a baker punches into any shape he likes, and they aren't sticks of barley sugar...."

"No, they aren't," Roger interrupted. "Wait till you see my cousin Rachel...."

"Have you got a cousin, Roger? How damned odd!" said Gilbert.

"Yes. I must bring her round here one evening. She's not a bad female ... quite intelligent for her sex. Go on!"

"They're like us, Quinny!" Gilbert continued. "They're good in parts and bad in parts. That's the vital discovery of the twentieth century, and I've made it!..."

Henry had been eager to hear Gilbert's criticism of his novel, but this kind of talk irritated him, though he could not understand why it irritated him, and his irritation drove him to sneers.

"I suppose," he said, "you want to substitute Social Reform and Improved Toryism for Romance. Lordy God, man, do you want to put eugenics and blue-books in place of the love of woman?"

"You're getting cross, Quinny!..."

"No, I'm not!"

"Oh, yes, you are ... very cross ... and you know what the fine for it is. If you want my opinion, here it is. I am prepared to accept eugenics and blue-books as a substitute for the love of women ... if they're interesting, of course. That's all I ask of any one or anything ... that it shall interest me. I don't care what it is, so long as it doesn't bore me. Women bore me ... women in books and plays, I mean ... because they're all of a pattern: lovebirds. I've never seen a play in which the women weren't used for sloppy emotional purposes. The minute I see a woman walking on to the stage, I say to myself, 'Here comes the Slop-tap!' and as sure as I'm alive, the author immediately turns the tap on and the woman is over ears and head in slop before we're two-thirds through the first act. And they're not like that in real life, any more than we are. We aren't continually making goo-goo eyes, nor are they. I'm going to write a play one of these days that will stagger the civilised world, I tell you! It'll be bung full of women but it won't have a word of slop from beginning to end!..."

"It'll be a failure," said Ninian.

"Oh, from the box-office point of view, no doubt!..."

"No, from the common sense point of view. I'm on the side of Quinny in this matter, and I'm as much of an authority on women as you are, Gilbert. I've loved three different barmaids and a young woman in a tobacconist's shop, and I say, what the hell is the good of talking all this rubbish about men and women trotting round as if male and female He had not created them. When I see a woman, if she's got any femininity about her at all, I want to hug her and kiss her, and I do so, if I can, and so does any man if he is a man. I belong to the masculine gender and she belongs to the feminine ... and that's all there's to be said about it. If we were neuters, we'd be characters in your play, Gilbert...."

"I don't want to kiss every girl I meet," said Gilbert.

They howled at him in derision. "Oh, you liar!" said Henry, forgetting his anger.

"You hug women all day long, you Mormon!" Ninian roared, "or you would if they'd let you!"

"That's why you react so strongly from love in your plays," Roger said judicially. "You can't leave them alone in real life...."

"I don't mean to say I haven't kissed a girl or two," Gilbert admitted.

"A girl or two! Listen to him!" Ninian went on. "Oh, listen to the innocent babe and suckling. A girl or two! Look here, let's make a census of 'em. What was the name of that girl whose brother got sent down? Lady Something?..."

"Lady Cecily!..."

"Shut up!" Gilbert shouted at them, and his voice was full of rage. He stood over them, glaring at them fiercely....

"I say, Gilbert!" said Henry, "what's up?"

He recovered himself. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to lose my temper!"

"That's all right, Gilbert," Ninian murmured. "It was my fault. I oughtn't to have rotted you like that!"

"It doesn't matter," Gilbert answered.

5

They were silent for a while, disconcerted by Gilbert's strange outburst of anger, and for a few moments it seemed as if their argument must end now. Ninian began to yawn again, and he was about to propose once more that they should go to bed, when Gilbert resumed the discussion.

"You make no allowance for reticence," he said to Henry. "That's what Roger really wants in politics ... reticence!"

"In everything," Roger exclaimed

"I know," Gilbert went on. "When I first went in to the Daily Echo office, I saw a notice in the sub-editor's room which tickled me to death. Elsden, the night editor, had put it up, and it said that the word 'gutted' was not to be used in describing the state of a house after a fire. I went to Elsden ... I like him better than any one else in the Echo office ... and asked him what was the matter with the word. 'Well, my dear chap,' he said, 'think of guts! I mean to say, Guts! Hang it all, we must cover up something!' I thought he was being rather old-maidish then, but I'm not sure now that Elsden's point of view hasn't got something behind it. He just wanted to be decently quiet about things that aren't pretty! I don't think it's necessary to blurt out everything, and I'm certain that if you keep on washing your dirty linen in public, people will end up by thinking you've got nothing else but dirty linen. Your characters," he added, turning to Henry, "go about, splashing in their emotions as if they were trick swimmers or ... or damn little journalists. I tell you, Quinny, love's a private, furtive thing, a secret adventure, and open exposure of it is a sort of profanity...."

"No," said Henry emphatically. "Love's made nasty by secrecy!" He began to spread himself. He had been reading some of the authors of the Yellow Book period. "It seems to me," he said, "that the marriage rite is broken, incomplete. In a healthy state, the whole function would be performed in public ... in ... in a cathedral, say. There'd be a procession of priests in golden chasubles, and acolytes swinging carved censers, and boys with banners, and hidden choirs chanting long litanies...."

"I shall be sick in a minute!" said Gilbert. "You're talking like an over-ripe Oscar Wilde, Quinny, and if you were really that sort of animal I'd have you hoofed out of this. Get out the whisky, Ninian, for the love of the Lordy God! This aesthetic stuff makes my inside wobble!"

Ninian went to the sideboard and took hold of the whisky bottle. "I don't much like that sort of talk myself," he said. "It's too clever-clever for my taste. I shouldn't let it grow on me, Quinny, if I were you. You'll get a reputation like bad eggs, and people'll think you've strayed out of your period and got lost. As a matter of fact, Gilbert, you don't really want whisky, and you're only going to drink it for effect, so you shan't have any!"

He returned to his seat, as he spoke, and sat down. Henry had a quick sense of shame. He had spoken insincerely, for effect ... in order to impress them with his cleverness, and their answer to him filled him with a sense of inferiority. He felt that they must despise him, and feeling that, he began to despise himself.

"My own feeling about these things," said Ninian, "is perfectly simple. I believe in lust. I'm a lustful man myself, and so, I believe, is Roger!..."

"No, I'm not," Roger exclaimed.

"Well, I am," Ninian proceeded. "Lust is the motor force of the world...."

"No, it isn't," Gilbert interrupted. "The whole of civilisation depends upon the human stomach. If men would live without eating ... the whole of this society would dissolve. Lust is subordinate to the stomach, Ninian. You've never seen a starving man in a purple passion, have you?"

Ninian leant forward and tapped the table with his knuckles. "I say that lust is the motor force of the world," he said, "and I think you might let me finish my sentences, Gilbert. You are so eager to vent your own views that you won't let any one else vent his...."

"What's the good of venting your views if they're wrong, damn it!" said Gilbert.

"Well, let me finish venting 'em anyhow. Assuming that I'm right, I say you should treat lust exactly as you treat the circulation of your blood: don't fuss about it. It's a natural function, neither beautiful nor ugly. It's just there, and that's all about it. The fellow who dithers about it as if he'd invented a new philosophy on the day he first slept with a woman, is a dirty, neurotic ass. So is the fellow who pretends that there's no such thing as sex in the world. Male and female created He them, and I can tell you, He jolly well knew what He was up to!"

Roger flicked the ash from his cigarette and coughed slightly.

"I think," he said, "we talk too much about these things. They pass the time, of course, but not very profitably. Whatever the Universal Motive may be ... I'm talking, of course, without prejudice ... it'll express itself in complete disregard of our feelings and views. I have had no experience of women otherwise than in the capacity of a mother, several aunts, a nurse, a number of cousins, and also some waitresses in restaurants...."

"Roger's never kissed a woman in a sexual sense in his life," Gilbert interrupted.

"I have never seen the necessity of it," Roger said.

"But aren't you curious to know what it's like? After all, it's a form of experience," Henry asked, looking at Roger with curiosity.

"Having scarlet fever is a form of experience, but I don't wish to know what it's like," Roger answered.

"My God, you are a prig, Roger!" said Gilbert simply.

"I know that," Roger answered. "That's why I don't get on with women. They find me out. No," he continued, "I've no experience of women in that way. I daresay I shall get experience some day, but in the meantime, I've got my job to do...."

"We shall have a virgin Lord Chancellor on the woolsack," said Gilbert, "and then may God have mercy on all poor litigants!"

"We really ought to go to bed," Ninian protested.

"Not yet," Henry exclaimed.

He had recovered from his feeling of dejection, and he was eager to retrieve the good opinion which he thought he had lost.

"My own view," he said, beginning as they always began their oracular pronouncements, "my own view is that we make the mistake of thinking in masses instead of in individuals. Everybody who tries to reform the world, tries to make it uniform, but what we want is the most complete diversity that's obtainable. It's the variations from type that make type bearable!..."

"That's a good phrase, Quinny. Where'd you get it from?" Gilbert interrupted.

Henry flushed with pleasure. "I made it up," he answered. "All men are different," he went on, "and therefore the morals that suit one person are unlikely to suit another person. Roger doesn't bother about women. He looks upon them as a ... a sideline. Don't you, Roger? He'll marry in due course, and he'll have one woman, and he'll have her all to himself. Won't you, Roger?"

"Probably," Roger replied, "but there's no certainty about these things."

Henry proceeded. "Gilbert wants lots and lots of women, but he doesn't want to talk about it, and he wants to keep his women and his work separate ... in watertight compartments, as it were. As if you could do that! And Ninian wants to have a good old hearty coarse time like ... like Tom Jones ... and then he'll repent and praise God and lay his stick about the backsides of all the young sinners he meets!"

"No, I don't, ..." said Ninian, but Henry, having started, would not let himself be interrupted. "I want to have lots and lots of women," he went on hurriedly, "but I don't care who knows about them. I like talking about my love-affairs...."

"Well, why don't you talk about 'em?" Gilbert demanded.

Henry was nonplussed. His speech became hesitant. "I ... I said I'd like to talk about them," he replied. "I didn't say I would do so...." He hurried away from the subject. "But chiefly," he said, "I don't want anything permanent in my life. Now, do you understand? Roger's like the Rock of Ages ... the same yesterday, to-day and forever, but I want to be different to-morrow from what I am to-day, and different again the day after. Endless variety for me!"

"It'll be an awful lot of trouble," said Gilbert.

"That doesn't matter. Now my argument is that I have a different nature from Roger and all of you, but I'm not a worse man than any of you are...."

"No, no, of course not," they asserted.

"I'm just different, that's all. The man who loves one woman and cleaves to her until death do them part isn't a better man or a worse man than the chap who loves a different woman every year, and doesn't cleave to any of them. He's just different. You see," he continued, pleased with the way he was enunciating his opinions, "we are of all sorts. There are lustful men and there are men who have scarcely any sex impulse at all, and there are coarse men and refined men, and ... and all sorts of men, and they're all necessary to the world. I say, why not recognise the differences between them and leave it at that! It's silly to try and fit us all with the same system of morals when nobody but a fool would try to fit us all with the same size hat!"

"You don't make any allowance for the views of women," Roger said.

"Oh, yes, I do," Henry retorted quickly. "There is as much variety among women as there is among men. Some of them are monogamous and some aren't. That's all!"

Gilbert stretched his legs out in front of him and then drew them back again. "Our little Quinny's got this world neatly parcelled out," he said. "Hasn't he, coves? There he sits, like a little Jehovah, handing out natures as if they were school-prizes. 'Here, my little lad, here's your set of morals. Now, run away and make a hog of yourself with the women!' 'Here, my little lad, here's your set of morals. Now, run away and be a bally monk!'"

"Exactly!" said Henry. "That's my view!"

"Well, all I can say," said Ninian, "is that it won't do. This may be a tom-fool sort of a world, but it gets along in its tom-fool way a lot better than it will in your neat arrangement of things...."

"Besides," Roger said, taking up the argument from Ninian, "there is a common measure in life. Oh, I know quite well that there are differences between man and man, but there are resemblances, too, and what we've got to do ... the Improved Tories, I mean ... is to discover which is the more important, the resemblances of men or the differences of men. As a lawyer, of course, I only know what's in my brief, but as a man, I'm interested!"

"The question is," said Gilbert, "are women a damned nuisance that ought to be put down, or are they not? I say they are, but I like 'em all the same, and that only shows what a blasted hole I'm in. I like kissing them ... it's no good pretending that I don't...."

"Not a bit," said Ninian.

"And I kiss 'em whenever I get a chance," Gilbert continued, "but all the same I'd like to be a whopping big icicle so as to be able to ignore 'em ... like Roger!"

Ninian got up, resolved on going to bed. "Come on," he said, stretching himself. "Our jaw about women doesn't appear to have solved anything!"

"It never will," Roger answered, rising too. "We shall still be jawing about them this day twelvemonth...."

"D.V.," said Gilbert.

"But we won't get any forrarder!"

"Rum things, women!" said Ninian, moving towards the door, "but very nice ... very nice, indeed!"

"My goodness me, I am tired," Gilbert yawned. "Oh, so tired! But we've settled everything, haven't we? The empire and women and so on? Great Scott," he exclaimed, "we forgot to say anything about God!"

"So we did," said Ninian, and he turned back from the door.

"The Improved Tories really ought to make up their minds about religion," Gilbert went on.

"Can't we leave that until to-morrow?" Roger complained. "We needn't talk about Him to-night, need we? I'm frightfully sleepy!..."

6

While Henry was undressing, he remembered how angry Gilbert had been with Ninian and Roger because they had mentioned the name of a girl for whom he had cared.

"Awfully rum, that!" he said to himself, sitting on the edge of his bed.

He tried to recall her name. "Lady something!" he said, and then said several times, "Lady ... Lady ... Lady!..." in the hope that the name would follow. But he could not remember it.

"Odd that I never heard of her before."

He put on his dressing-gown, and opened the door of his room. "I'll ask old Ninian," he said, as he went out.

Ninian, who had been yawning so heavily downstairs, was now sitting up in bed, reading a copy of the Engineer.

"Hilloa," he exclaimed as Henry entered the room in response to his "Come in!"

"I say, Ninian, what was the name of the girl that Gilbert was so gone on at Cambridge? Lady something or other! He was rather sick with you for mentioning her...."

"Oh, Lady Cecily Jayne!"

"Is that her name? Who is she?"

"Society female," said Ninian. "Takes an interest in literature and art in her spare time, but she doesn't know anything about either of them. Her brother was in our college until he got sent down. That was how Gilbert met her. She came up one May week and made eyes at Gilbert. She wasn't married then!..."

"Is she married?" Henry interrupted.

"Oh, yes. She used to be Lady Cecily Blandgate ... her father's the Earl of Bucklersbury. She's a big female...."

"What do you mean? Fat?"

"No. Tall," said Ninian.

"Is she good-looking?"

"Yes, she is, and rather amusing, too, in a footling sort of way. She's got a fearful appetite, and she thinks of herself all day long. I know because she damn near ruined me over cream buns once."

"I suppose Gilbert was in love with her?..."

"I suppose so. He didn't tell me and I didn't ask, but he mooned about with her and looked awfully sloppy when he passed her things. You know what I mean. He'd hand her a plate of bread and butter, and look at her as much as to say, 'This is really my heart I'm handing you!' I never saw a chap look such an ass!"

"Has she been married very long?"

"Oh, a year or two. I don't know. I'm not very interested in her. Too much of a female for my taste. Extremely entertaining in the evening and the afternoon, but awfully boring in the morning!..."

"Sounds like sour grapes, Ninian!"

"Oh, I've been in love with her if that's what you mean. We all were, even old Roger. In fact, I kissed her once ... or was it twice? She's the sort of woman a chap does kiss somehow. I couldn't think of anything else to do when I was with her. That's why she's so dull. She splashes her sex about as if she were distributing handbills. I'm surprised that you don't know her. She's a very well-known female...."

"I've been in Ireland, Ninian...."

"So you have. I'd forgotten that. Of course, if you will live in a place like that, you can't expect to be familiar with the wonders of civilisation. Ever see the Daily Reflexion?"

"Oh, yes, we get that in Ireland all right!"

"Do you, indeed! Well, praise God from Whom all blessings flow. If you buy a copy of to-morrow's Daily Reflexion, you'll probably see her photograph in it, or a paragraph about her. Roger says people pay to have themselves mentioned once a month in that sort of rag!"

"What's her husband like?" Henry asked.

"God made him, but nobody knows why. I believe chorus girls call him 'Chummie.' That's his purpose in life. I say, Henry, there's a ripping sketch of a new kind of engine in this paper. I wish you'd let me explain it to you...."

"Who is her husband?" said Henry.

"Who is who's husband?"

"Lady Cecily Jayne's!..."

"Lordy God, man, you're not talking about her still, are you? Her husband is ... let me see ... oh, yes, he's Lord Jasper Jayne. His name sounds like the hero of a servant's novelette, but he doesn't look like that. He looks like a chucker-out in a back-street pub. His father's the Marquis of Dulbury. He's the second son. The eldest is sillier, but it's all been hushed up. Anything else you want to know?"

"I'm just interested, that's all!"

"Her brother ... I told you, didn't I? ... was at Cambridge with us. He came down a year before we did. As a matter of fact, he was sent down and told to stay down. He ducked a proctor in a water-butt and the dons were very cross about it. He's not a bad fellow. I think we'll ask him round here one evening. Lady Cecily's very fond of him ... she used to come up to Cambridge to see him ... before the affair with the proctor, of course ... and Gilbert and I took her and another female out in a punt once!"

Henry, who had been sitting in an arm-chair while Ninian told him about Lady Cecily Jayne, got up and walked across the room.

"Gilbert was very upset when you mentioned her name," he said. "I suppose her marriage was a blow to him?"

"Oh, I don't know. Look here, Quinny, if you're going to jaw any more about this female, you can just hop off to your own room, but if you'd like to hear me explaining these diagrams to you, you can stay...."

"Do you ever see Lady Cecily now?" Henry asked, ignoring what Ninian had said.

"Now and again. Gilbert sees her quite often...."

"Does he?" Henry said eagerly.

"Yes. At first nights. She goes to the theatre a lot. Do you want to meet her?"

There was some confusion in Henry's voice as he answered, "I should like to meet her. You see, I've never known a really beautiful woman...."

"Aren't there any in Ireland?"

"Oh, yes. Plenty. Peasant girls, particularly!" He thought for a moment or two of Sheila Morgan, and then hurriedly went on. "But I've never known a really beautiful woman. You see, Ninian, ours is a fairly lonely sort of house, and I've spent most of my time either there or at T.C.D. or at Rumpell's, and somehow I've never got to know any one...."

"Well, you'd better ask Gilbert to take you with him to a first-night. She's sure to be there, and you can ask him to introduce you to her. And now, you can hoof out, young fellow!..."

Henry went back to his own room and got into bed, but he did not sleep until the dawn began to break. His thoughts wandered vaguely about his mind, bumping up against one recollection and then against another. He remembered Sheila Morgan and the bright look in her eyes that evening when she had hurriedly come into the Language class out of the rain ... and while he was remembering Sheila, he found himself thinking of Mary Graham and the way in which she would put up her hand and throw her long hair from her shoulders. Then came memories of Bridget Fallon ... and almost mechanically he began to murmur a prayer to the Virgin. "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus!..."

He turned over on his side, pulling the bedclothes more closely about him. "Cecily Jayne," he murmured in a sleepy voice. "What a pretty name, that is!"



THE FOURTH CHAPTER

1

Their days were spent in work. Ninian and Roger left the house soon after nine o'clock, Ninian to go to the office of his engineering firm in Victoria Street, Roger to go to his chambers in the Temple, leaving Henry and Gilbert to work at home. In the evening, provided that there was not a "first-night" to call Gilbert to the theatre, they talked of themselves and of their future. Their egotism was undisguised. They had set their minds on a high destiny and were certain that they would achieve it, so they did not waste any energy, as Gilbert once said, in pretending that they were not remarkably able. In a short time, they gathered a group of friends about them who were, they thought, likely to work well and ably, and it became the custom for their friends to visit them on Thursday evening. Gilbert began the custom of asking some one to dine with them on Thursday, and the guest was expected to account for himself to the group that assembled after dinner. The Improved Tories, according to Gilbert, wanted heart-to-heart talks from people of experience. If a guest treated them to flummery, they let him know that they despised his flummery and insisted on asking him questions of a peculiarly intimate character. There were less than a dozen people in the group, apart from Roger and Ninian and Gilbert and Henry, but each of them had distinguished himself in some fashion at his college. Hilary Cornwall had taken so many prizes and scholarships that he had lost count of them, and when he entered the Colonial Office, it became a commonplace to say of him that he was destined to become Permanent Under-Secretary at a remarkably youthful age. Gerald Luke had produced two little books of poetry of such quality that people believed that he was in the line of great tradition. Ernest Carr had edited Granta so ably that he was invited to join the staff of the Times. Then there were Ashley Earls, who had had a play produced by the Stage Society, and Peter Crooks, the chemist, and Edward Allen, who was private secretary to a Cabinet Minister, and Goeffrey Grant, another journalist, and Clifford Dartrey, who spent his time in research work and had already produced a book on Casual Labour in the Building Trades in return for the Shaw Prize at the London School of Economics.

They called themselves the Improved Tories, although most of them would have voted at an election for any one but a Conservative candidate. Ashley Earls and Gerald Luke were Socialists and had only consented to join the group because they were told that the purpose of it was less political than sociological.

"You see," Gilbert said to them, "it isn't good for England to have a Tory Party so dense as this one is, and you'll really be doing useful work if you help to improve their quality. What is the good of an Opposition which can do nothing but oppose? Look at that fellow, Sir Frederick Banbury! What in the name of God is the good of a man like that? He doesn't make anything ... he just gets in the way. Of course, that's useful ... but he doesn't know when to get out of the way ... which is much more useful. And there ought to be people who aren't content either to get in the way or just get out of it ... there ought to be people who can shove things along. But there aren't ... except Balfour, and he's getting old and anyhow he hasn't got much health. You see what I mean, don't you? There ought to be a strong Opposition, otherwise the Liberals will develop fatty degeneration of the political sense.... The trouble with a lot of these fellows is that they believe that twaddle that Lord Randolph Churchill talked about the duty of an Opposition being to oppose. Of course it isn't. The duty of the Opposition is to criticise and to improve, if they can...."

And so Ashley Earls and Gerald Luke joined the group of Improved Tories, not as members, but as critics. It was they who induced the others to join the Fabian Society. "You can become subscribers ... that won't commit you to anything ... and then you'll be able to attend all the meetings and get all the publications. It'll be good for you!..."

The supply of political guests was not of the quality they desired. The eminent politicians were either too busy or too scornful to accept their invitations. F. E. Robinson was impertinent to them until he heard that Mr. Balfour was interested in their proceedings ... had even asked to be introduced to Roger Carey ... and then he offered to address them on Young Toryism, but they told him that they did not now wish to hear him. They had taken Robinson's measure very quickly. "Police-court lawyer!" they said, and ceased to trouble about him. Mr. Balfour never attended the group, but they consoled themselves to some extent by reading his book on Decadence and arguing about it among themselves. If, however, they were not able to secure many of the Eminent Ones, they were able to secure plenty of the Semi-Eminent, far more than they wanted, and for half a year, they listened to politicians of all sorts, Old Tories and Young Tories, Liberal Imperialists and Radicals, Fabian Socialists and Social Democrats, heckling them and being heckled by them. At the end of that six months, Gilbert revolted against politicians.

"These aren't the people who really matter," he said. "They don't start things. We want to get hold of the people with new ideas ... the men who begin movements and the men who aren't always wondering what their constituents will say if they hear about it!"

Then followed a term with men who might have been called cranks. Bernard Shaw declined to dine with them ... he preferred to eat at home.... "Voluptuous vegetarian!" said Gilbert ... but he talked to them for an hour on "Equality" and tried to persuade them to advocate equal incomes for all, asserting that this was desirable from every point of view, biological, social and economic. Following Bernard Shaw, came Edward Carpenter, very gentle and very gracious, denouncing modern civilisation in words which were spoken quietly, but which, in print, read like a thunderstorm. Alfred Russell Wallace, whom they invited to talk on Evolution, came and talked instead on the nationalisation of land. He sat, huddled in a chair, very old and very bright, with eyes that sparkled behind his glasses ... and suddenly, in the middle of his discourse on land, he informed them that he had positive proof of the existence of angels. "My God, he'll want to make civil servants of 'em!" Gilbert whispered to Henry.... Sir Horace Plunkett dined with them one night, eating so little that he scarcely seemed to eat at all, and he preached the whole gospel of co-operation. It was through him that they got hold of an agricultural genius called T. Wibberley, an English-Irishman, who reorganised the entire farming system on a basis of continuous cropping inside an hour and ten minutes. Wibberley knew Henry's father, and for the first time in his life Henry learned that Mr. Quinn's agricultural experiments were of value.... Then came H. G. Wells, smiling and very deprecating and almost inarticulate, to tell them of the enormous importance of the novelist. They got him into a corner of the room, when he had finished reading his paper, and persuaded him to make caricatures of them ... and while he was making the caricatures, he talked to them far more brilliantly than he had read to them. G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc came to lecture and stayed to drink. Chesterton's lecture would have been funny, they agreed, if they had been able to hear it, but he laughed so heartily at his jokes, as he, so to speak, saw them approaching, that he forgot to make them. His method of speech was a mixture of giggle and whisper. "Chuckle-and-squeak!" Gilbert called it. Belloc whispered dark things about Influential Families and Hebrews and seemed to think that a man who changed his name only did so with the very worst intentions. He and Chesterton said harsh things about the Party System, and they babbled beatifically about the Catholic Church.... "Two big men like that gabbling like a couple of priest-smitten flappers!" said Gilbert in disgust as he listened to them. "Them and their Cathlik Church!" he added, imitating Belloc's way of pronouncing the word "Catholic." Mouldy, grovelling, fat Papists! he called them, and vowed that he would resign from the Improved Tories if any more of that sort were asked to address them. That was because some one had suggested that Cecil Chesterton should also be invited to dine with them. "He's simply Belloc's echo," Gilbert protested. "I should feel as if I were listening to his master's voice. Besides, he's fatter than Belloc and he's a damned jiggery-pokery Papist too! Why don't these chaps go and cover themselves with blue woad and play mumbo-jumbo tricks before the village idol! That 'ud be about as intelligent as their Popery!" They intended to ask Lord Hugh Cecil to talk to them about Conservatism, but when they read his book on the subject they decided that such a Conservative was utterly damnable ... and so they asked his brother, Lord Robert, instead, and found that his point of view, although much more human and less logical than that of Lord Hugh, was antipathetic to theirs.

"Let's get Garvin!" Gilbert suggested, when they discussed the question of a more improved Tory than Lord Robert. "The Cecils are no good ... they're too superstitious!" which was his way of saying that they were too religious. "They're worse than priests: they're ... they're laymen! I propose that we ask Garvin to come and talk to us. He seems to be shoving the Tories all over the place!" So they invited the editor of the Observer to dine and talk with them, and he came, a quick, eager, intense man, with large, starting eyes, who spoke so quickly that his words became entangled and were wrecked on his teeth. They liked him, but they were dubious of his right to represent the Tory spirit. It seemed to them that this eager, thrusting-forward man, who banged the table in his earnestness, might carry a political party off its feet in his passion, but they were afraid that the feet would trail, that the party would be reluctant to be lifted. "He's Irish," said Roger in judgment.

"It isn't any good," Gilbert remarked, when Garvin had gone home, "trying to persuade the English to spread their wings. They haven't got any. Garvin 'ud do better if he'd hold a carrot in front of them ... they'd follow that. Quinny," he added, "you ought to ask Garvin for a job on the Observer. They say he can't resist an Irishman!"

"I will," Henry replied.

"Oh, and there's a chance of doing book reviews on the Morning Report!" Geoffrey Grant said. "I told Leonard, the literary editor, about you, and he said he'd look at you if you went round one day!"

"I'll go and look at him," Henry answered.

2

While they were spending their evenings in this fashion, Henry, working steadily in the mornings, completely revised his novel. Gilbert, working less steadily than Henry, finished a new comedy and sent it to Sir Goeffrey Mundane, the manager of the Pall Mall Theatre, who utterly astounded Gilbert by accepting it.

"Quinny!" he shouted, running up to Henry's room with the letter which had been delivered by the mid-day post, "Mundane's accepted 'The Magic Casement'!"

"What's that?" said Henry, turning round from his desk.

"He's accepted it, Quinny! I always said he was a damned good actor, and so he is. My Lord, this is ripping! He says it's a splendid comedy ... so it is ... as good as Oscar Wilde at his best ... oh, better, damn it, better ... and will I please come and see him on Friday morning at eleven o'clock ... I'll be there before he's out of bed!... I say, Quinny, we ought to do something, ought'nt we? Is it the correct thing to get drunk on these occasions?"

His joy was so extravagant that Henry felt many years older than Gilbert, and he patted him paternally on the shoulder and told him to develop the stoic virtues.

"I'm most frightfully pleased, Gilbert!" he said, when he had done with the paternal manner. "When's he going to put the play on?"

"He doesn't say. The thing he's doing now is no damn good, and he'll probably take it off soon. Perhaps he'll produce 'The Magic Casement' after that. Quinny, it is a good play, isn't it? Sometimes I get a most shocking hump about things, and I think I'm no good at all...."

"Of course, it's a good play, Gilbert!..."

"Yes, but is it good enough?"

"I don't know. I don't suppose anything ever is. I thought 'Drusilla' was a great book until my father read it, and then I thought it was rubbish...."

"It wasn't rubbish, Quinny, and the revised version is really good."

"I think that, too, but sometimes I'm not sure!"

"Isn't it damnable, Quinny, this job of writing? You never get any satisfaction out of it. I'd like to make cheeses ... I'm sure people who make cheeses feel that they've just made the very best cheese that can be made ... but I'm always seeing something in my work that might have been done better."

Henry nodded his head. "I suppose," he said, "it'll always be like that I think," he went on, "Maiden is going to take my novel. I saw Redder yesterday!..." Redder was his agent ... "and he says Maiden's the likeliest person. I shan't get much. Forty or fifty pounds on account of royalties, but it's a start!"

"The great thing," said Gilbert, "is to get into print. I wonder how much I'll make out of my play!"

"More than I shall make out of my novel," Henry answered. His talks with Mr. Redder had modified Henry's ideas of the profits made by novelists.

Gilbert started up from the low chair into which he had thrown himself. "I'm going to start on another play this minute!" he said. "My head's simply humming with ideas!" He stopped half way to the door, and turned towards Henry again. "You were working when I came in," he said. "What are you doing?"

"I've started another novel," Henry answered.

"Oh! Done much of it?"

"No, only the title. I'm calling it 'Broken Spears.'"

"Damn good title, too," said Gilbert.

3

The book was published long before Gilbert's play was produced; for Sir Geoffrey Mundane had taken fright at Gilbert's play. He was afraid that it was too clever, too original, too much above their heads, and so forth. "I'd like to produce it," he said. "I'd regard it as an honour to be allowed to produce it, but the Pall Mall is a very expensive theatre to maintain and I don't mind telling you, Mr. Farlow, that I lost money on that last piece, too much money, and I must retrieve some of it. Your play is excellent ... excellent ... in fact, it's a piece of literature ... almost Greek in its form ... Greek ... yes, I think, Greek ... remarkable plays those were, weren't they? ... Have you seen this portrait of me in to-day's Daily Reflexion ... quite jolly, I think ... but it won't be popular, Mr. Farlow, and I must put on something that is likely to be popular!"

Gilbert found Sir Geoffrey's sudden changes of conversation curiously interesting, but the hint of disaster to "The Magic Casement" disturbed him too much to let his interest absorb him.

"Then you've decided not to do the play?" he said, with a throb of disappointment in his voice.

Sir Geoffrey rose at him, fixing his eye-glass, and patted him on the shoulder. "No, no," he said. "I didn't mean that. I'll produce the play gladly ... some day ... but not just at present. If you care to leave it with me...."

Gilbert wondered what he ought to say next. Sir Geoffrey might retain the play for a year or two, and then decide that he could not produce it.

"Perhaps," he said, "you'd undertake to do it within a certain time...." He wanted to add that Sir Geoffrey should undertake to pay a fine if he failed to produce the play within the "certain time," but his courage was not strong enough. He was afraid that Sir Geoffrey might be offended by the suggestion and return the play at once. He wished that he had gone to Mr. Redder, as Henry had done, and asked him to place the play for him. "Redder'd stand no humbug," he said to himself.

Sir Geoffrey murmured something about the undesirability of committing oneself, and added that Gilbert should be content to wait for a year without any legal undertaking. "Of course," he said magnanimously, "if you can place the play elsewhere, don't let me stand in your way!" but Gilbert, alarmed, hurriedly said that he would be glad to leave the play with him for the time he mentioned. "I'd like you to take the part of Rupert Westlake," he said. "I don't think any one could play it so well as you could!" and Sir Geoffrey, still responsive to flattery, smiled and said he would be delighted to create the part.

The play which he produced instead of "The Magic Casement" ran for six weeks, bringing neither profit nor honour to Sir Geoffrey, who began to lose his head, with the result that he produced another play which was a greater failure than its predecessor. Then came a revival of an old play which had a moderate amount of success, and "I'll do your play next," he said to Gilbert. "I shall certainly do your play next!"

It was because of these delays in the production of "The Magic Casement" that Henry's novel, "Brasilia," was published much earlier than the play was performed. He had rewritten it so extensively that it was almost a new novel, very different from the manuscript which his father had read, and it received a fair number of reviews. The critics whose judgment he valued, praised it liberally, but the critics whose judgment he despised, either damned it or ignored it. Gilbert said it was splendid. "There's still some Slop in it," he said, "but it's miles better than the first version." Roger liked it. He said, "I like it, Quinny!" and that was all, but Henry knew that his speech was considerable praise. Ninian's praise was extravagant, and he was almost like a child in his pleasure at receiving an inscribed copy from Henry. He spent the better part of an afternoon in going to bookshops and asking the grossly ignorant assistants why they had not got "Drusilla" prominently placed in the window. The assistants were not humiliated by his charge of gross ignorance, nor were they impressed by his statement that the Times Literary Supplement had described the book as "remarkable." So many remarkable books are published in the course of a season that the assistants do not attempt to remember them; and so many friends of remarkable young authors wish to know why the works of these remarkable young men are not stacked in the window that the assistants have learned to look listlessly at the people who make the demands. Ninian bought three copies of the novel, and sent one to his mother and one to the Headmaster of Rumpell's and one to his uncle, the Dean of Exebury. "That ought to help the sales, Quinny!" he said. "I bought 'em in three different shops, and I stuffed the chaps that I'd been to other places to get it, but found they were sold out!"

"That'll make two copies Mrs. Graham'll have," Henry replied. "I've sent one to her to-day...."

"Well, she can give the other one to Mary," said Ninian.

The book was not a success. Including the number sold to the libraries, only three hundred and seventy-five copies were sold, but the financial failure of the book did not greatly depress Henry, for he had the praise of his friends to console him. His father's letter had heartened him almost as much as the review in the Times. "It's great stuff," he wrote, "and I'm proud of you. I didn't think you could improve it so much as you have done. Hurry up and do another one!"

His second book, "Broken Spears," was in proof before Sir Geoffrey Mundane decided to produce "The Magic Casement," and for a while he was at a loose end. He could not think of a subject for another story, although he had invented a good title: Turbulence. He sat at his desk, forcing himself to write chapters that ended ingloriously. He wrote pages and pages, and in the evening threw them into the wastepaper basket. "My God," he said to himself one morning, when he had been sitting at his desk for over an hour without writing a word, "I believe I've lost the power to write!"

He got up, terrified, and went to Gilbert's room.

"Hilloa, bloke!" said Gilbert, looking round at him as he entered.

"Are you busy, Gilbert?" he asked.

"I'm kidding myself that I am, but between ourselves, Quinny, I'm reading Gerald Luke's last book. That chap's a poet. He's as good as Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Listen to this!..."

But Henry did not wish to listen to Gerald Luke's poems.

"Gilbert," he said, "I believe I'm done!"

"Done?" Gilbert exclaimed, putting down the book of poems.

"Yes. I don't believe I shall ever do another book...."

"Silly ass!"

"I can't think of anything. My mind's like pap. I keep on writing and writing, but I only get a pile of words. That was bad enough, but to-day I can't write at all. I simply can't write...."

"Haven't you got a theme?"

"Vaguely, yes, but the thing won't come to life. The people lie about like logs, and ... damn them, they won't move!"

"Look here," said Gilbert, "I'm tired of work. Let's chuck it for a while. You're obviously off colour, and a holiday'll do you good. Let's go out somewhere for the day anyhow. I've a first night this evening. We'll wind up with that!"

"What's the play?" Henry asked.

"A revival. They're bringing Wilde's 'The Ideal Husband' on at the St. James's again," Gilbert answered. "Alexander's very good in it...."

"That's the fashionable theatre, isn't it?"

Henry's knowledge of London was still very limited, and he seldom visited the theatre, chiefly because Gilbert, who had to visit them all, spoke of the English drama with contempt.

"Yes," Gilbert replied. "All the Jews and dukes go there. Suppose we go for a row on the Serpentine, Quinny? You can pull the oars for an hour. It'll do you no end of good, and I'll lie in the bottom of the boat and watch you. That'll do me no end of good. Come on, let's get out of this!"

4

They came away from the boathouse, and as they walked towards Hyde Park Corner, a motor-car drove slowly past them.

"Who's that?" said Henry, as Gilbert raised his hat to the lady who was seated in the car.

"Lady Cecily Jayne," Gilbert answered.

"Oh!... She's very beautiful."

"Think so?"

"Yes."

"I'll introduce you to her to-night. She's certain to be at the theatre. We ought to make certain of getting a ticket for you, Quinny. Let's go down to the theatre and book a seat."

They came out of the Park and walked down Piccadilly to St. James's Street and presently turned the corner of the street in which the theatre is situated. Henry was able to secure a stall, but it was not next to Gilbert's. It was in the last row.

"Never mind," said Gilbert, "we can meet between the acts. My seat's at the end of a row, and you can easily get out of yours. If Cecily's in a box, she'll probably ask us to stay in it. She likes to have people about her!"

Henry wanted to talk about Lady Cecily to Gilbert, but the tone of his voice as he said, "She likes to have people about her!" prevented him from doing so. It was odd, he reflected, that Gilbert had never confided in him about her, odder still that there had been no talk of her in the Bloomsbury house since the night on which Henry and Ninian had discussed Gilbert's outburst of anger when her name was mentioned. Gilbert, could be very secretive, Henry thought....

"She's very beautiful," he said aloud.

Gilbert nodded his head.

"Very beautiful!" Henry repeated.

"You're an impressionable young fellow, Quinny!" said Gilbert. "I won't call you 'sloppy' again because I'm tired of telling you that, but really that's what you are. You've only got to see a beautiful woman for a couple of seconds and you start buzzing round her like a bumble bee. Of course, I'm sloppy myself. We're all sloppy. Damn it, here we are, two healthy young fellows who ought to be working hard, and we're wasting a fine morning in gabbling about women...."

"Not women, Gilbert! Lady Cecily!..."

"Lady Cecily! Lady Cecily!..." He stopped suddenly and turned to Henry. "I suppose you know about her and me?" he said.

"Very little," Henry answered.

"Let's have some tea. Well go in here!" The abrupt change disconcerted Henry for a moment or two, but he followed Gilbert into the tea-shop.

"I can see you're ready to fall in love with her," Gilbert said, as they drank their tea.

"Don't be an old ass!" Henry replied, feeling confused.

"She'll ask you to come and see her, and you'll waste a lot of time next week trying to meet her...."

Henry laughed nervously. "You're rather ridiculous, Gilbert," he said. "I've never seen Lady Cecily before. I'm just interested in her because she's so beautiful. That's natural enough, isn't it?"

"Oh, yes, it's natural enough, and Lady Cecily will like your interest in her beauty!"

The bitterness of his tone was remarkable. Henry felt, as he listened to him, that there were open wounds....

"Don't call her Cecily until you've known her two days," Gilbert went on. "She's very particular about that sort of thing. And don't fall too much in love. It'll take you longer to get over it than it took me!"

"I hate to hear you talking like that, Gilbert. Anybody'd think you were a dried-up old rip. You're frightfully cynical...."

"That's because I'm so young, Quinny. I'm younger than you are, you know ... six months ... but I'll grow up. I will grow up, Quinny, I swear I will, and get full of the milk of lovingkindness. Pass the meringues. They play the devil with my inside, but I like them and I don't care ... only Lord help the actors to-night!"

"I suppose Lady Cecily got tired of you, Gilbert," Henry said deliberately. He felt angry with him and tried to hurt him. The beauty of Lady Cecily had filled him with longing to meet and know her, and he had a strange sense of jealousy when he thought of Gilbert's friendship with her.

"No," Gilbert answered, "I don't think she got tired of me. I think she still cares for me as much as ever she did!..."

"Damned conceit!" Henry exclaimed, laughing to cover the jealousy that was in him.

"Oh, no, Quinny, not really. You'll understand that soon, I expect!" He pushed his tea-cup away from him, and sat back in his chair. "I suppose it is caddish to talk of her like this," he went on. "One ought to bear one's wounds in silence and feel no resentment at all ... but somehow she draws out the caddish part of me. There are women like that, Quinny. There's a nasty, low, mean streak in every man, I don't care who he is, and some women seem to find it very easily. Here, let's get out of this. You pay. I've had a sugary bun and a couple of meringues...."

5

Later in the evening they went to the theatre together. As they walked up the steps into the entrance hall, Henry saw Lady Cecily standing in a small group of men and women who were talking and laughing very heartily.

"There she is!" he whispered to Gilbert.

"Who is?"

"Lady Cecily!"

"Oh, so she is. Let's find our seats!"

"Perhaps you could catch her eye, Gilbert...."

"Catch my grandmother!" said Gilbert. "Come on!"

But if Gilbert were not willing to catch Lady Cecily's eye, Lady Cecily was very willing to catch his. She saw him walking towards the stalls, and she left her group of friends and went over to him and touched his arm. "Hilloa, Gilbert!" she said, holding her hand out to him. "I thought I should see you here to-night!"

She spoke in louder tones than most women speak, and her voice sounded as if it were full of laughter. There was something in her attitude which stirred Henry, something which vaguely reminded him of a proud animal, stretching its limbs after sleep. Her thick, golden hair, cunningly bound about her head, glistened in the softened light, and he could almost see golden, downy gleams on her cheeks. She held her skirts about her, as she stood in front of Gilbert, and Henry could see her curving breasts rising and falling very gently beneath her silken dress. The odour of some disturbing perfume floated from her.... He moved a step nearer to her, wondering why Gilbert did not smile at her nor show any signs of pleasure at meeting her. It seemed to him to be impossible for any one but the most curmudgeonly of men to behave so ungraciously to so beautiful a woman, or to resist her radiant smiles. She turned to him as he moved towards her, and he saw that her eyes were grey. He heard Gilbert mumbling the introduction.

"So glad!" she said, shaking hands with him. He had expected her to bow to him, and had not been prepared for the offer of her hand. He inwardly cursed his clumsiness as he changed his gesture. "I saw you in the Park with Gilbert this afternoon, didn't I?" she added.

"Yes," he answered, and could say no more. Shyness had fallen on him, and he stood before her, grinning fatuously, and twisting a button on his waistcoat, but unable to speak. "Yes," he said, after a while, "I was with Gilbert in the Park this afternoon!"

"Speak up, you fool!" he was saying to himself. "Here's the loveliest woman you've ever met waiting for you to speak to her, and all you can do is to repeat her phrases as if you were a newly-breeched brat aping its parent. Speak up, you fool!..."

He felt his face turning red and hot. Almost before he knew what he was saying his tongue began to wag, and he heard himself saying, in a stiff, stilted voice, "It was very nice in the Park this afternoon!..." Oh, banal fool, he thought, she will despise you now, as if you were a great, gawky lout....

She turned away from him, and spoke to Gilbert. "I've been at Dulbury," she said, "for six weeks. That's where I got all this brown!..." She laughed and pointed to her cheeks. "I'm so glad to get back. The country bores me stiff. Nothing to see but the scenery. Oh dear!" She almost yawned at her remembrance of the country. "And things are always biting me or stinging me. I'm miserable all the time I'm there!"

"Then why do you go?" said Gilbert.

"Jimphy wanted to go. Jimphy thinks it's his duty to show himself to the tenants now and again. It's the only return he can make, poor dear, for all that rent they pay!"

Gilbert said "Hm!" and then turned to go to the stalls. "It's Jimphy's birthday to-day," she said, and he turned to her again. "That's why we're here to-night. Together, I mean. He's treating me to a box. Come round and talk to us, Gilbert, after the first act ... and you, too, Mr.... Mr!..."

She fumbled over his name. Gilbert, as is the custom in England when introducing people, had spoken the name so indistinctly that she had not heard it.

"Quinn!" he said.

"Of course," she replied. "Mr. Quinn. I'm awfully stupid about names. You'll come, too?"

"I should like to!"

"Do. Gilbert, don't forget. Jimphy's very morose this evening. He's thirty-one to-day, and he thinks that old age is creeping over him!"

"All right," said Gilbert gloomily, and then he and Henry went to their seats.

"Who is Jimphy?" said Henry, as they walked down the stairs into the auditorium.

"Her husband. Didn't you notice something hanging around in the vestibule while we were talking to her?"

"No. There were so many people about!"

"Well, if you had noticed something hanging around, that would have been Jimphy. His real name is Jasper, but Cecily never calls any one by his real name ... except me. She can't think of a name for me!"

They entered the auditorium and stood for a moment looking about the theatre. People were passing quickly into their seats now, and the theatre was full of an eager air, of massed pleasure, and a loud buzz of conversation spread over the stalls from the pit where rows of young women whispered to each other excitedly as this well-known person and that well-known person entered.

"That's 'er, that's 'er!" one girl said in a frenzied whisper to her companion.

"Viola Tree?" the other girl, gazing vacantly into the stalls, replied.

"No, silly! Ellen Terry! Clap, can't you?"

And they clapped their hands as the actress went to her seat.

There was more clapping when Sir Charles Wyndham came in and took his seat.

"Is it Viola Tree?" the girl repeated.

"No, silly. It's Wyndham. Bray-vo! Seventy, if 'e's a day, an' don't look it. My word, I am enjoyin' myself, I can tell you! Everybody's 'ere to-night. Of course, it's St. James's, of course!..."

Popular criminal lawyers came in and sat next to racing marquises; and lords and ladies mingled with actresses who very ostentatiously accompanied their mothers. A few men of letters and a crowd of dramatic critics, depressed, unenthusiastic men, leavened the mass of the semi-great. The rest were the children of Israel.

"Jews to the right of us, Jews to the left of us!..." Gilbert said.

"Anti-Semite!" Henry replied.

"Only in practice, Quinny, not in theory. I'll see you at the interval!"

"If you nip out of your seat as the curtain goes down," said Henry, "we can both get up to her box before the rush!..."

"There won't be any rush."

"Well, anyhow, we can get up to the box pretty quickly!"

Gilbert walked away without replying, and Henry sat back in his seat and watched the boxes so that he might see Lady Cecily the moment she entered. His stall was in the last row, against the first row of the pit, and the girls who had applauded Miss Terry and Sir Charles Wyndham were still identifying the fashionable people.

"I tell you it is 'im," said the more assertive of the two.

"I sawr 'is picture in the Daily Reflexion the time that feller ... wot's 'is name ... the one that 'anged all 'is wives in the coal-cellar ... you know!..."

"I know," the other girl replied. "'Orrible case, I call it!"

"Well, 'e defended 'im. I sawr 'is picture in the Daily Reflexion myself. Very 'andsome man, eh? They do say!..."

Lady Cecily came into her box, followed by her husband, and Henry looked steadily up at her in the hope that she would see him, but she did not glance in his direction. He could see that she had found Gilbert in the audience, but Gilbert was not looking at her. An odd sensation of jealousy ran through him. He suddenly resented her familiarity with Gilbert. He remembered that she had called him by his Christian name, that she distinguished between him and other men by calling him by his proper name, and not by some fanciful perversion of it. If only she would call him by his Christian name!...

She was leaning on the edge of the box, and looking about the auditorium.

"That's Lydy Cecily Jyne!" he heard the assertive girl behind him saying.

"'Oo?'"

"Lydy Cecily Jyne. You know!"

Her husband leant back in his seat, stifling a yawn as he did so, and Henry saw that he was a faded, insignificant-looking man whose head sloped so sharply that it seemed to be galloping away from his forehead; but he did not pay much attention to him. His eyes were fixed on Lady Cecily.

"A bit 'ot, she is," the girl behind him was saying. "Well, I mean to say!..."

But what she meant to say, Henry neither knew nor cared. The lights in the theatre were lowered, leaving only the bright, warm glow of the footlights on the heavy curtain. He could see Lady Cecily's face still golden and glowing even in the darkness.

"My dear," said the girl behind him, "the things I've 'eard ... well, they'd fill a book!"

Then the curtain went up and the play began.

He saw her leaning forward eagerly to watch the stage, and presently he heard her laughing at some piece of wit in the play: a clear, joyful laugh; and as she laughed, she turned for a few moments and gazed into the darkened theatre. Her beautiful eyes seemed to him to be shining stars, and he imagined that she was looking straight at him. He smiled at her, and then jeered at himself. "Of course, she can't see me," he said.

He tried to interest himself in the traffic of the stage, but his thoughts continually wandered to the woman in the box above him.

"She's the loveliest woman I've ever seen," he said to himself.



THE FIFTH CHAPTER

1

She turned to greet them as they entered the box. "Come and sit beside me, Gilbert!" she said. "Mr. Quinn ... oh, you don't know Jimphy, do you?" She introduced Henry to her husband who mumbled "How do!" in a sulky voice, and stood against the wall of the box twisting his moustache. The shyness which had enveloped Henry in the vestibule of the theatre still clung about him, and he felt awkward and tongue-tied. Lord Jasper Jayne did not help Henry to get rid of his shyness. There was a "Who-the-devil-are-you?" look about him that made easy conversation impossible and any conversation difficult. Lady Cecily was chatting to Gilbert as if she had been saving up all her conversation for a month past exclusively for his ears; and Henry could hear a recurrent phrase.... "But, Gilbert, it's ages since you've been to see me, and you know I like you to come!..." that jangled his temper and made him feel savage towards his friend....

He made an effort to be chatty with Lord Jasper. "How do you like the play?" he said, as pleasantly as he could, for it was not easy to be chatty with Lord Jasper, whose coarse, flat features roused a sensation of repulsion in Henry.

"I don't like it," he replied. "Rotten twaddle!"

"Oh!" Henry exclaimed.

There did not appear to be anything more to say, nor did Lord Jasper seem anxious to continue the conversation; but just when it appeared that the effort to be pleasantly chatty was likely to be abortive, Lord Jasper suddenly walked towards the door of the box. "Come and have a drink!" he said.

Henry did not wish to go and have a drink, and he paused irresolutely until Lady Cecily suddenly leant forward and said with a laugh, "Yes, do go with Jimphy, Mr. Quinn. Gilbert and I have such a lot to say to each other, and Jimphy's not in a good temper. Are you, Jimphy, dear? You see," she went on, "he wanted to go to the Empire, but I made him bring me here!... Do cheer up, Jimphy, dear! Smile for the company!..."

Lord Jasper opened the door of the box and went out, and Henry, raging inwardly, followed him. Before he had quite shut the door again, Lady Cecily had turned to Gilbert. Her hand was on his sleeve, and she was saying, "But Gilbert, darling!..." He shut the door quickly and almost ran after Lord Jasper. She was in love with Gilbert, and Gilbert was in love with her. A woman would not put her hand so affectionately on a man's arm and call him "Gilbert, darling!" if she were not in love with him. She had wished to be alone with Gilbert ... had practically turned him out of the box so that she might be alone with Gilbert ... had not waited for him to close the door before she began to fondle him ... and Gilbert had spoken so bitterly of her!...

He followed on the heels of Lord Jasper, passing through a throng of men in the passages and on the stairs, until he reached the bar. "Whisky and soda?" said Lord Jasper, and Henry nodded his head.

"I hate theatres," Lord Jasper said.

"Oh!" Henry replied.

That seemed to be the only adequate retort to make to anything that Jimphy said.

"Yes, I can't stand 'em. Cecily let me in to-night ... on a chap's birthday, too. She might have chosen the Empire!"

"You like music-halls then?"

"They're all right. Better than theatres anyhow. I like to see girls dancing and ... and ... all that kind of thing!"

A bell rang, warning them that the second act was about to begin.

"I suppose we ought to go back," said Henry, putting his glass down. He had barely touched the whisky and soda.

"No hurry," Lord Jasper replied. "No hurry. And you haven't drunk your whisky? Cecily's quite happy with that chap, Farlow.... I don't like him myself ... oh, I say, he's a pal of yours, isn't he? Well, it doesn't matter now. I don't like him, and he doesn't like me. I know he doesn't. I can always tell a chap doesn't like me because I generally don't like him. Have another, will you?"

Henry shook his head.

"I think we ought to be getting back," he said, "I hate disturbing people after the curtain's gone up!"

"You don't want to see that rotten play, do you? Look here ... I've forgotten your name! Sorry!..."

"Quinn. Henry Quinn!"

"Oh, Quinn! You're not English, are you?"

"I'm Irish."

"Are you? That's damn funny! Well, anyhow, what I was going to say was this. You don't want to see this rotten play, do you?"

"I do rather!..."

"No, you don't, Quinn. No, you don't. And I don't want to see it, either. Very well, then, what's to prevent you and me going to the Empire together, eh? We can come back for Cecily!..."

Henry stared at Lord Jasper. "But we can't do that," he protested.

"Oh, yes we can. Cecily won't mind. She'll be glad. We'll go and tell her ... and look here, Quinn, I'll introduce you to a girl I know ... very nice girl ... perfect lady ... lives with her mother as a matter of fact ... Eh?"

"I'd much rather see the play!"

"Oh, all right," Lord Jasper said sulkily. "All right!"

Henry moved towards the door of the bar, but Lord Jasper made no attempt to follow him. "Aren't you coming?" he said, pausing at the door.

"No," Lord Jasper replied. "I don't want to see the damn play. I shall have another drink, and then I shall go to the Empire by myself. You better go back to Cecily and ... and that chap Farlow. She won't notice I'm not there!"

"You'd better come and tell her yourself, hadn't you?" Henry said.

Lord Jasper deliberated with himself for a few moments.

"All right," he said. "I will. I'll come presently. You tell her, will you, that I'll come presently. P'raps you'll change your mind, Quinn, and come with me to the Empire after you've had another dose of this damn play. A chap doesn't want to see a play on a chap's birthday!..."

It occurred to Henry that Lord Jasper Jayne was slightly drunk. He had swallowed the second whisky and soda rather more expeditiously than he had swallowed the first, and no doubt he had dined well. There was a bleary look in his eyes that signified a heated brain....

"My God," Henry said to himself, "that beautiful woman married to this ... this swine!"

"I'm thirty-one to-day, ole f'la," Lord Jasper continued, coming over to Henry and taking hold of his arm. "Thirty-one. I'm getting on in years, ole f'la, that's what I'm doing ... sere and yellow, so to speak ... and a chap my age doesn't want to be bothered with a damn play. He wants something ... something substansl!..." He fumbled over the word "substantial" and then fell on it. "Something substansl," he repeated. "Now, if you come with me!..."

"I say, you mustn't talk so loudly," Henry warned him. "The curtain's gone up, and you'll disturb people...."

"All right, ole f'la, all right. I won't say another word!"

They stumbled along the passages to the door of the box, and entered as quietly as they could.

"We thought you'd got lost," said Lady Cecily, smiling at Henry.

"No ... no," he replied, "we didn't get lost!"

2

Gilbert was sitting in the seat where Jimphy had sat earlier in the evening. "Gilbert is going to stay here," said Lady Cecily. "Won't you stay, too, Mr. Quinn!"

"Won't I be crowding you?..." he said.

"Oh, no," she replied. "Jimphy doesn't want to see the play anyhow, and he'll be quite happy if he has some one to talk to in the bar between the acts!..."

He felt the blood rushing violently to his head, and in his anger he almost got up and walked out of the box. That she should use him to keep her sottish husband entertained while she made love to Gilbert, filled him with a sensation that came near to hatred of her. Gilbert had not spoken since they returned to the box, but it was clear from his manner that there had been love-making.... He crushed down his anger, and stood behind Lady Cecily while the play went on. Her bare shoulders had a soft, warm look, in the subdued light ... he was conscious of beautifully shaped ears nestling in golden hair ... and the anger in him began to die. Once she moved slightly in her seat, and looked round as if she wanted to speak. He leant over her.

"Do you want anything?" he asked.

"My wrap," she said.

He picked up the flimsy wrap and put it about her shoulders, and she turned to him and smiled and said, "Thank you!" and instantly all the anger in him perished. He had admired her before, admired her ardently, but now he knew that he loved her, must love her always....

There was a sound of heavy breathing, and he turned to look at Jimphy.

"Wake him up," said Lady Cecily in a whisper. "Poor dear, he always goes to sleep when he's annoyed!"

He tiptoed across the box and shook the sleeper's arm.

"Eh? What is it?" Lord Jasper said, as he opened his eyes and gaped about him, and then, as he became conscious of his surroundings, he said, "Is it over yet?"

"No. The second act isn't finished yet!"

"Oh, Lord!" he groaned.

"It'll be over in a few minutes!"

"Thank God! I can't stick plays ... not this sort anyhow. I don't mind a musical comedy now and again, although I think you can have too much of that...."

Lady Cecily turned and waved her hand at her husband. "Ssh, Jimphy!" she whispered. "You're making a frightful row!"

The second act ended soon afterwards, and Lord Jasper scrambled to his feet ... he had been sitting on the ground at the back of the box, yawning and yawning ... and made for the door. "Come and have a drink, Quinn!" he said.

"No, thanks," Henry replied.

"Come on. Be a sport!"

"Do go with him, Mr. Quinn, please," Lady Cecily said. "He's sure to get lost or troublesome or something. Aren't you, Jimphy dear?"

"Aren't I what!"

"Aren't you sure to get lost or troublesome or something!"

Lord Jasper did not reply to his wife. "Come along, Quinn!" he said. "Cecily thinks she's being comic!..."

Henry hesitated for a moment or two. He did not wish to go to the bar, and he was sick of the sight of Lord Jasper. He wished very much to stay with Lady Cecily, and he felt hurt because she had urged him to accompany her husband. He would have to do as she had asked him, of course.... While he hesitated, Gilbert got up quickly from his seat and went to the door of the box. "I'll come with you, Jimphy!" he said, and then, almost pushing Lord Jasper in front of him, he went out, closing the door of the box behind him. Henry stared at the door for a second or two, nonplussed by the swiftness of Gilbert's action, and then he turned to Lady Cecily. A look of vexation on her face instantly disappeared and she smiled at Henry.

"Come and sit here," she said, "and tell me all about yourself. I haven't really got to know you, have I? Gilbert says you're Irish!"

"Yes," he answered, sitting down.

"How jolly!" she said.

"Do you think so?"

"Oh, yes. It's supposed to be awfully jolly to be Irish. All the Irish people in books seem to be very amused about something. I suppose it's the climate. They say there's a great deal of rain in Ireland...."

"Yes," he answered vaguely, "there is some sometimes!"

She questioned him about Gilbert and Ninian Graham and Roger Carey.

"It must be awfully jolly," she said, "to be living together like that, you four men!"

He noticed that Lady Cecily always spoke of things being "awfully jolly" and wondered why her vocabulary should be so limited in its expressions of pleasure.

"We get on very well together," he replied, "and it's very lively at times. Gilbert's very lively...."

"Is he?" she said. "He always seems so ... so ... well, not lively. I don't mean that he's solemn or pompous, but he's so ... so anxious to have his own way, if you understand me. Now, I'm not like that!" She broke off and laughed. "Oh, I don't quite mean that. I am selfish. I know I am. I love having my own way, but if I can't have a thing just as I want it ... well, I'm content to have it in the way that I can. Now, do you understand?"

Henry nodded his head.

"Gilbert isn't like me," she continued. "He says to himself, 'I must have this thing exactly in this way. If I can't have it exactly in this way, then I won't have it at all!' and it's so silly of him to behave like that!"

Henry looked up at her in a puzzled fashion. "What is it he wants?... I beg your pardon, I'm being impertinent!"

"Oh, no!" she replied, smiling graciously at him. "He wants ... oh, he wants everything like that. Haven't you noticed?"

"No," Henry answered, "I haven't."

"Well, you will some day. My motto is, Take what you can get in the way you can get it. It's so much easier to live if you act on that principle!"

"Gilbert's an artist, Lady Cecily, and he can't act on that principle. No artist can. He takes what he wants in the way that he wants it or else he will not take it at all!"

"Exactly. That's what I've been saying. And it's so silly. But never mind. He's young yet, and he'll learn!"

She turned to gaze at the audience, and Henry, not knowing what else to do and having no more to say, looked too. He could think of plenty of fine things to say to her, but he could not get them on to his tongue. He wanted to tell her that he had scarcely heard a word of what was said in the first act of the play because he had filled his mind with thoughts of her, and had spent most of the time in gazing up at her as she sat leaning on the ledge of her box; but when he tried to speak, his mouth seemed to be parched and his tongue would not move.

3

"Do you like this play?" she asked.

"No," he replied.

"Why? I thought everybody admired Wilde's wit. It's clever, isn't it?"

"I don't like it!"

"But it's supposed to be awfully clever!" she insisted.

"It's a common melodrama with bits of wit and epigram stuck on to it!" Henry answered.

"Oh, really!"

"The wit isn't natural ... it doesn't grow naturally out of the life of the play, I mean. It's stuck on like ... like plaster images on the front of a house. The witty speeches aren't spontaneous ... they don't come inevitably!... I'm afraid I'm not making myself very clear, but anyhow, I don't like the play. I don't like anything Wilde wrote, except 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol,' and even that's not true. That's really why I dislike his work. It isn't true, any of it. It's all lies...."

"How awfully interesting!"

"Do you know 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol'? he asked.

"No.... Oh, yes! I have read it. Of course, I have. Somebody lent it to me or I bought it or something.... Anyhow, I have read it, but I can't remember...."

"Do you remember the lines?...

For all men kill the thing they love, But all men do not die."

"I seem to remember something ..." she said vaguely.

"Well, that's a lie. All men don't kill the thing they love. Wilde couldn't help lying even when he was most sincere!"

"That's awfully interesting," Lady Cecily said. "Do you know I've never thought of that before. Won't you come and see me one afternoon, Mr. Quinn?"

"I should like to," he said, and as he spoke, the door of the box opened and Gilbert entered, followed by Lord Jasper.

Lady Cecily turned eagerly to Gilbert. "Oh, Gilbert," she said, "Mr. Quinn promised to come and see me one afternoon. You'll bring him, won't you? Come on Wednesday, both of you!"

"I should like to," Henry murmured again.

"I don't think I can come on Wednesday," Gilbert said.

"Oh, yes, you can," Lady Cecily exclaimed, "and if you can't, you can come some other day. You'll come, Mr. Quinn, won't you?"

"Yes, Lady Cecily!..."

"And.... Jimphy, dear, do be nice and ask them to come to supper with us after the play. We're going to the Savoy afterwards. I thought it would please Jimphy to go there because he'd be sure not to like the play...."

"Yes, you come along, you chaps!" Jimphy said, willingly.

"I can't. I'm sorry," Gilbert replied. "I've got to go down to Fleet Street and write a notice of this play!"

"Can't you put it off for once, Gilbert!" Lady Cecily said.

Gilbert laughed. "I should like to see Dilton's face if I were to do that...."

"Dilton! Dilton!! Who is Dilton?" she demanded.

"My editor. Very devoted to the human note, Dilton is. No, Cecily, I'm sorry, but I must go down to Fleet Street. Henry can go with you."

She paused for a moment, and then said, "How long will it take you to write the notice of the play?" she asked, adding before he could answer, "Can't you do it now?"

"Yes, Gilbert," Henry said, "you can do it now. You know the play, and you've seen the acting in two acts...."

Gilbert looked at him very directly, and when he spoke, his voice was very firm. "No," he said, "I must go down to Fleet Street!"

Lady Cecily was cross and hurt, and she turned away pettishly.

"Oh, very well!" she said shortly.

There was a slight air of restraint among them ... even Lord Jasper seemed to feel it. It was he who spoke next.

"You can come and join us at the Savoy after you've done your ... whatyoumaycallit, can't you?" he said.

Gilbert paused for a moment. He looked as if he were undecided as to what he should say. Then he said, "Yes, I can do that ... if I get away from the office in time!"