w this--it will finish your Duchess, your
Beaminsters, your queen in her bonnet, your Sundays and your religion
and your Whigs and Tories, and all your hypocrisies--No names any more
taken just because they've always been taken, but new names made by men
who're doing things. Nothing taken for granted any more.

"Your Beaminsters will vanish, and then you'll have your Denisons and
Oaks and Ruddards on top. Then you'll see a time. You'll all be spinning
like a top, dancing, dancing like dervishes. Then while you're busy
dancing up the other people will quietly come--all the real people, the
Individualists--Women will have their justice--no man will skunk behind
his garden hedge because he doesn't want to be bothered. No more
superstition, no more inefficiency----"

"You're a wonderful fellow, Brun," said Christopher, getting up and
flinging away the end of his cigarette. "You've always got any amount to
say--but do you never think of people as people, not as theories or
movements or developments----"

"No, thank God, I don't. That's for the sentimentalists like you,
Christopher. People are all the same, fools or knaves."

"Well, I'm glad I don't think so," said Christopher.

"Tell me," Brun put his little hand on the other's elbow, "your
Beaminsters now, how are they?"

"They're all right."

"The Duchess? I hear she's not so well----"

"Oh! nonsense--Well as she's been any time these last thirty years."

"Yes? So--I'm glad. But the other Beaminsters? Ah! I must go quickly and
call--To see them burst asunder, that will be most amusing----"

Christopher laughed. "You won't see the Duke or Richard Beaminster
burst," he said--"They're like you--no personal feeling."

"And the girl?"

"Lady Seddon?"

"Yes. She'll stir things up. She's not a Beaminster, or only enough of
one to make her hate the family. And she does hate them, _hein_?"

"Oh, my dear Brun, you've got an absurdly exaggerated view about
everything. You'd twist the Beaminsters into anything to make them fit
your theory."

"Oh, they'll fit it right enough. But I must be in at the death. We'll
meet there together, Christopher. Things will occur before we're much
older, my sentimentalist."

Christopher shook his head. "There's something sinister about your
appearances in the City, Brun. 'Where the carcases are, there will....'"

Brun nodded. "It's true enough this time," he said.

CHAPTER IX

THE DARKEST HOUR

"So God help us! and