're just divine," said the fatter.

"I don't know if you can call the fleshly lusts divine," replied the
thinner, looking into the eyes of the writer of the songs.

Amidst all the hum of voices and the fumes of smoke, a sense of formality
was haunting Shelton. Sandwiched between a Dutchman and a Prussian poet,
he could understand neither of his neighbours; so, assuming an
intelligent expression, he fell to thinking that an assemblage of free
spirits is as much bound by the convention of exchanging their ideas as
commonplace people are by the convention of having no ideas to traffic
in. He could not help wondering whether, in the bulk, they were not just
as dependent on each other as the inhabitants of Kensington; whether,
like locomotives, they could run at all without these opportunities for
blowing off the steam, and what would be left when the steam had all
escaped. Somebody ceased playing the violin, and close to him a group
began discussing ethics. Aspirations were in the air all round, like a
lot of hungry ghosts. He realised that, if tongue be given to them, the
flavour vanishes from ideas which haunt the soul.

Again the violinist played.

"Cock gracious!" said the Prussian poet, falling into English as the
fiddle ceased: "Colossal! 'Aber, wie er ist grossartig'!"

"Have you read that thing of Besom's?" asked shrill voice behind.

"Oh, my dear fellow! too horrid for words; he ought to be hanged!"

"The man's dreadful," pursued the voice, shriller than ever; "nothing but
a volcanic eruption would cure him."

Shelton turned in alarm to look at the authors of these statements. They
were two men of letters talking of a third.

"'C'est un grand naif, vous savez,'" said the second speaker.

"These fellows don't exist," resumed the first; his small eyes gleamed
with a green light, his whole face had a look as if he gnawed himself.
Though not a man of letters, Shelton could not help recognising from
those eyes what joy it was to say those words: "These fellows don't
exist!"

"Poor Besom! You know what Moulter said . . ."

Shelton turned away, as if he had been too close to one whose hair smelt
of cantharides; and, looking round the room, he frowned. With the
exception of his cousin, he seemed the only person there of English
blood. Americans, Mesopotamians, Irish, Italians, Germans, Scotch, and
Russians. He was not contemptuous of them for being foreigners; it was
simply that God and the climate