t of the matter. "It's rather
curious that we should all three have had the same thing in mind just
now; or, rather, it is not very curious. Such coincidences are really
very common. Something must have been said at dinner which suggested
it to all of us."

"All but Acton," Minver demurred.

"I mightn't have heard what was said," I explained. "I suppose the
passing of all that sort of sub-beliefs must date from the general
lapse of faith in personal immortality."

"Yes, no doubt," Wanhope assented. "It is very striking how sudden the
lapse was. Everyone who experienced it in himself could date it to a
year, if not to a day. The agnosticism of scientific men was of course
all the time undermining the fabric of faith, and then it fell in
abruptly, reaching one believer after another as fast as the ground
was taken wholly or partly from under his feet. I can remember how
people once disputed whether there were such beings as guardian
spirits or not. That minor question was disposed of when it was
decided that there were no spirits at all."

"Naturally," Minver said. "And the decay of the presentiment must have
been hastened by the failure of so many presentiments to make good."

"The great majority of them have failed to make good, from the
beginning of time," Wanhope replied.

"There are two kinds of presentiments," Rulledge suggested, with a
philosophic air. "The true and the untrue."

"Like mushrooms," Minver said. "Only, the true presentiment kills, and
the true mushroom nourishes. Talking of mushrooms, they have a way in
Switzerland of preserving them in walnut oil, and they fill you with
the darkest forebodings, after you've filled yourself with the
mushrooms. There's some occult relation between the two. Think it out,
Rulledge!"

Rulledge ignored him in turning to Wanhope. "The trouble is how to
distinguish the true from the untrue presentiment."

"It would be interesting," Wanhope began, but Minver broke in upon him
maliciously.

"To know how much the dyspepsia of our predecessors had to with the
prevalence of presentimentalism? I agree with you, that a better diet
has a good deal to do with the decline of the dark foreboding among
us. What I can't understand is, how a gross and reckless feeder, like
Rulledge here, doesn't go about like ancestral voices prophesying all
sorts of dreadful things."

"That's rather cheap talk, even for you, Minver," Rulledge said. "Why
did you think presentiments ran in