the other night had dissected the fellow--"smart";
and the varnish on the floor, the pictures, and the piano were reflected
on all the faces around. Shelton moved from group to group disconsolate.

A tall, imposing person stood under a Japanese print holding the palm of
one hand outspread; his unwieldy trunk and thin legs wobbled in concert
to his ingratiating voice.

"War," he was saying, "is not necessary. War is not necessary. I hope I
make myself clear. War is not necessary; it depends on nationality, but
nationality is not necessary." He inclined his head to one side, "Why do
we have nationality? Let us do away with boundaries--let us have the
warfare of commerce. If I see France looking at Brighton"--he laid his
head upon one side, and beamed at Shelton,--"what do I do? Do I say
'Hands off'? No. 'Take it,' I say--take it!'" He archly smiled. "But
do you think they would?"

And the softness of his contours fascinated Shelton.

"The soldier," the person underneath the print resumed, "is necessarily
on a lower plane--intellectually--oh, intellectually--than the
philanthropist. His sufferings are less acute; he enjoys the
compensations of advertisement--you admit that?" he breathed
persuasively. "For instance--I am quite impersonal--I suffer; but do I
talk about it?" But, someone gazing at his well-filled waistcoat, he put
his thesis in another form: "I have one acre and one cow, my brother has
one acre and one cow: do I seek to take them away from him?"

Shelton hazarded, "Perhaps you 're weaker than your brother."

"Come, come! Take the case of women: now, I consider our marriage laws
are barbarous."

For the first time Shelton conceived respect for them; he made a
comprehensive gesture, and edged himself into the conversation of another
group, for fear of having all his prejudices overturned. Here an Irish
sculptor, standing in a curve, was saying furiously, "Bees are not
bhumpkins, d---n their sowls!" A Scotch painter, who listened with a
curly smile, seemed trying to compromise this proposition, which appeared
to have relation to the middle classes; and though agreeing with the
Irishman, Shelton felt nervous over his discharge of electricity. Next
to them two American ladies, assembled under the tent of hair belonging
to a writer of songs, were discussing the emotions aroused in them by
Wagner's operas.

"They produce a strange condition of affairs in me," said the thinner
one.

"They