know ourselves as we
are, and understand our own greatness. We do not hoodwink ourselves into
the blind belief that we are ordinary men, with the intellects of
Cabinet Ministers, or the passions of the proletariat. No, we--closing
time, Waiter! How absurd! Why, is it forbidden in England to eat
strawberries after midnight, or to go to bed at one o'clock in the day?
Come, Reggie! It is useless to protest, as Mr. Max Beerbohm once said in
his delicious 'Defence of Cosmetics.' Come, the larks will soon be
singing in the clear sky above Wardour Street. I am tired of tirades.
How sweet the chilly air is! Let us go to Covent Garden. I love the
pale, tender green of the cabbage stalks, and the voices of the
costermongers are musical in the dawning. Give me your arm, and, as we
go, we will talk of Albert Chevalier and of the mimetic art."

IV.

During the few days that elapsed before the advent of the Surrey week,
Lady Locke saw a great deal of Lord Reggie, and became a good deal
troubled in her mind about him. He was strangely different from all the
men and boys whom she had ever known, almost monstrously different, and
yet he attracted her. There was something so young about him, and so
sensitive, despite the apparent indifference to the opinion of the
world, of which he spoke so often, and with such unguarded emphasis.
Sometimes she tried to think that he was masquerading, and that a
travesty of evil really concealed sound principles, possibly even
evangelical tendencies, or a bias towards religious mania. But she was
quickly undeceived. Lord Reggie was really as black as he painted
himself, or Society told many lies concerning him. Of course Lady Locke
heard nothing definite about him. Women seldom do hear much that is
definite about men unrelated to them; but all the world agreed in saying
that he was a scamp, that he was one of the wildest young men in
London, and that he was ruining his career with both hands. Lady Locke
hardly knew why she should mind, and yet she did mind. She found herself
thinking often of him, and in a queer sort of motherly way that the
slight difference in their ages did not certainly justify. After all, he
was nearly twenty-five and she was only twenty-eight, but then he looked
twenty, and she felt--well, a considerable age. She had married at
seventeen. She had travelled, had seen something of rough life, had been
in an important position officially owing to her dead husband's military