mething damned 'wrong' with him."

"Yes. And Sophy knows it as well as we do ... only she has to _pwetend_
not to. Now isn't that _twagic_?"

"Yes. Hard lines ... poor girl!..." said Arundel. He had always been
very fond of Sophy. "First she gets a Bedlamite like Chesney--then this
... this lurid Yankee."

Olive began giggling in spite of her genuine concern. "Lurid Yankee"
seemed to her so exquisitely fitting an epithet. But she stopped as
suddenly as she had begun.

"What _is_ w'ong with him, Jack?" she took it up, deeply pondering once
more. "You're a man ... you ought to be able to say at once."

Arundel pondered also.

"Perhaps it's a form of National swagger," he ventured at last. "That
sort of way they have of implying 'I'm as good as a king, and better,
damn your eyes!' It's odd to me that an American of this type will
condescend to bend his knees in prayer. They'd call up the Lord over a
telephone wire if they could."

"Maybe it's the way they're brought up, Jack."

"Oh, they aren't 'brought up'!"

"Well, then ... maybe it's that."

Olive's heart was sore for her friend. She was as loyal in her
friendships as she was fickle in her loves. She lay long awake as she
had predicted, thinking it all over.

"Sophy ought to have made a _gweat_ match, with her gifts and charm and
beauty," she reflected sadly. "And she goes and mawwies that _howidly_
handsome boy."

Just as she was drowsing off, however, a consoling thought occurred to
her:

"But he must have made _divine_ love!" she reflected, smiling. And this
smile lay prettily on her lips as she slept. To be "made divine love to"
was, in Olive's creed, compensation for most of the ills of life.

XXIII

John Arundel was quite as "tactful" in speaking to Loring as he had
assured his wife that he would be. He merely took advantage of the
first opening and said in a by-the-way-my-dear-chap tone that a certain
guest then at Everstone was accustomed to a rather exaggerated homage,
and might, he feared, take umbrage if too often jested with. He said
that lions, especially aged lions, were not noted for their sense of
humour. He alluded to the fact that no less an one than Huxley had once
ventured to be playful in replying to the Personage in question, and had
received only a thunderous roar in return. That, in fact, the Personage
had never pardoned the Scientist for venturing to use irony in this
discussion. It was all said in the most casual way