ay of Borogrove's?" asked Shelton, as they
passed the theatre to which he had been with Halidome.

"I never go to modern plays," replied Mr. Paramor; "too d---d gloomy."

Shelton glanced at him; he wore his hat rather far back on his head, his
eyes haunted the street in front; he had shouldered his umbrella.

"Psychology 's not in your line, Uncle Ted?"

"Is that what they call putting into words things that can't be put in
words?"

"The French succeed in doing it," replied Shelton, "and the Russians; why
should n't we?"

Mr. Paramor stopped to look in at a fishmonger's.

"What's right for the French and Russians, Dick," he said "is wrong for
us. When we begin to be real, we only really begin to be false. I should
like to have had the catching of that fellow; let's send him to your
mother." He went in and bought a salmon:

"Now, my dear," he continued, as they went on, "do you tell me that it's
decent for men and women on the stage to writhe about like eels? Is n't
life bad enough already?"

It suddenly struck Shelton that, for all his smile, his uncle's face had
a look of crucifixion. It was, perhaps, only the stronger sunlight in
the open spaces of Trafalgar Square.

"I don't know," he said; "I think I prefer the truth."

"Bad endings and the rest," said Mr. Paramor, pausing under one of
Nelson's lions and taking Shelton by a button. "Truth 's the very
devil!"

He stood there, very straight, his eyes haunting his nephew's face; there
seemed to Shelton a touching muddle in his optimism--a muddle of
tenderness and of intolerance, of truth and second-handedness. Like the
lion above him, he seemed to be defying Life to make him look at her.

"No, my dear," he said, handing sixpence to a sweeper; "feelings are
snakes! only fit to be kept in bottles with tight corks. You won't come
to my club? Well, good-bye, old boy; my love to your mother when you see
her"; and turning up the Square, he left Shelton to go on to his own
club, feeling that he had parted, not from his uncle, but from the nation
of which they were both members by birth and blood and education.

CHAPTER VII

THE CLUB

He went into the library of his club, and took up Burke's Peerage. The
words his uncle had said to him on hearing his engagement had been these:
"Dennant! Are those the Holm Oaks Dennants? She was a Penguin."

No one who knew Mr. Paramor connected him with snobbery, but there had
been an "Ah! that 's right; thi