zing doctrine of
timidity, penetrated even the oak door of 8 Chelmsford Gardens. The
Ironmonger's daughter found that being the daughter of a man who had
made an honest living rendered her socially the unequal of the
daughters of men who, acting on a free translation of 'The earth is the
Lord's,' had done nothing but inherit unearned substance.

Then there was her cheerfulness, and the menacing voice!

Turning from the aloofness of the exclusive, Lady Durwent thought of
taking in famous performing Lions and feeding them. Unfortunately the
market was too brisk, and the only Lion she could get was an Italian
tenor from Covent Garden, who refused to roar, but left a poignant
memory of garlic.

It was then that a brilliant idea entered her brain. Lady Durwent
decided to cultivate _unusual_ people.

No longer would she batter at oak doors that refused to open; no more
would she dangle morsels of food in front of overfed Lions. She would
create a little Kingdom of remarkable people--not those acclaimed great
by the mealy mob, but those whose genius was of so rare and subtle a
growth that ordinary eyes could not detect it at all. Her only fear
was that she might be unable to discover a sufficient number to create
a really satisfactory _clientele_.

But she reckoned without her London.

For every composer in the Metropolis who is trying to translate the
music of the spheres, there are a dozen who can only voice the
discordant jumble of their minds or ask the world to listen to the
hollow echo of their creative vacuum. For every artist striving to
catch some beauty of nature that he may revisualise it on canvas, there
are a score whose eyes can only cling to the malformation of existence.
For every writer toiling in the quiet hours to touch some poor, dumb
heart-strings, or to open unseeing eyes to the joy of life, there are
many whose gaze is never lifted from the gutter, so that, when they
write, it is of the slime and the filth that they have smelt, crying to
the world that the blue of the skies and the beauty of a rose are
things engendered of sentimental minds unable to see the real, the
vital things of life.

To this community of _poseurs_ Lady Durwent jingled her town house and
her title--and the response was instantaneous. She became the hostess
of a series of dinner-parties which gradually made her the subject of
paragraphs in the chatty columns of the press, and of whole chapters in
the gossip of London