ssed
the advertisements. They stood up when Lady Helen entered. [Footnote:
See _A Modern Lover_.] She had come to speak to Frank about a poem,
and she only paused in her rapid visit to shake hands with Harding,
and she asked Mike if his poems would be published that season.

The contributors to the _Pilgrim_ dined together on Wednesday, and
spent four shillings a head in an old English tavern, where unlimited
joint and vegetables could be obtained for half-a-crown. The
old-fashioned boxes into which the guests edged themselves had not
been removed, and about the mahogany bar, placed in the passage in
front of the proprietress's parlour, two dingy barmaids served actors
from the adjoining theatre with whisky-and-water. The contributors to
the _Pilgrim_ had selected a box, and were clamouring for food.
Smacking his lips, the head-waiter, an antiquity who cashed cheques
and told stories about Mr. Dickens and Mr. Thackeray, stopped in
front of this table.

"Roast beef, very nice--a nice cut, sir; saddle of mutton just up."

All decided for saddle of mutton.

"Saddle of mutton, number three."

Greasy and white the carver came, and as if the meat were a delight
the carver sliced it out. Some one remarked this.

"That is nothing," said Thompson; "you should hear Hopkins grunting
as he cuts the venison on Tuesdays and Fridays, and how he sucks his
lips as he ladles out the gravy. We only enjoy a slice or two,
whereas his pleasure ends only with the haunch."

The evening newspapers were caught up, glanced at, and abused as
worthless rags, and the editors covered with lively ridicule.

The conversation turned on Boulogne, where Mike had loved many
solicitors' wives, and then on the impurity of the society girl and
the prurient purity of her creation--the "English" novel.

"I believe that it is so," said Harding; "and in her immorality we
find the reason for all this bewildering outcry against the slightest
license in literature. Strange that in a manifestly impure age there
should be a national tendency towards chaste literature. I am not
sure that a moral literature does not of necessity imply much laxity
in practical morality. We seek in art what we do not find in
ourselves, and it would be true to nature to represent an unfortunate
woman delighting in reading of such purity as her own life daily
insulted and contradicted; and the novel is the rag in which this
leper age coquets before the mirror of its hypocrisy, re