more people don't follow it. You are too generous,
Esme; you took it up out of pure love of the thing."

"The true artist will always be an amateur," said Lord Reggie, dreamily,
and gazing towards Lady Locke with abstracted blue eyes, "just as the
true martyr will always live for his faith. Esme is like the thrush. He
always tells us his epigrams twice over, lest we should fail to capture
their first fine careful rapture. Repetition is one of the secrets of
success nowadays. Esme was the first conversationalist in England to
discover that fact, and so he won his present unrivalled position, and has
known how to keep it."

"Conversational powers are sometimes very distressing," said Madame
Valtesi. "Last winter I was having my house in Cromwell Road painted
and papered. I went to live at a hotel, but the men were so slow, that
at last I took possession again, hoping to turn them out. It was a most
fatal step. They liked me so much, and found me so entertaining, that
they have never gone away. They are still painting, and I suppose always
will be. Whenever I say anything witty they scream with laughter, and I
believe that my name has become a household word in Whitechapel or
Wapping, or wherever the British workman lives? What am I to do?"

"Read them Jerome K. Jerome's last comic book," said Amarinth, "and they
will go at once. I find his works most useful. I always begin to quote
from them when I wish to rid myself of a bore."

"But surely he is a very entertaining writer," said Lady Locke.

"My dear lady, if you read him you will find that he is the reverse of
Beerbohm Tree as Hamlet. Tree's Hamlet was funny without being vulgar.
Jerome's writings are vulgar without being funny. His books are like
Academy pictures. They are all deserving of a place on the line."

"I think he means well," said Mrs. Windsor, taking some strawberries.

"I am afraid so," Amarinth answered. "People who mean well always do
badly. They are like the ladies who wear clothes that don't fit them in
order to show their piety. Good intentions are invariably
ungrammatical."

"Good intentions have been the ruin of the world," said Reggie
fervently. "The only people who have achieved anything have been those
who have had no intentions at all. I have no intentions."

"You will at least never be involved in an action for breach of promise
if you always state that fact," said Lady Locke, laughing.

"To be intentional is to be middle class," rem