of an
outsider. He gathered this by intuition rather than from conversation;
for conversation naturally tabooed such questions, and was carried on in
the loud and cheerful tones peculiar to people of good breeding. Shelton
had never been able to acquire this tone, and he could not help feeling
that the inability made him more or less an object of suspicion. The
atmosphere struck him as it never had before, causing him to feel a doubt
of his gentility. Could a man suffer from passion, heart-searchings, or
misgivings, and remain a gentleman? It seemed improbable. One of his
fellow-guests, a man called Edgbaston, small-eyed and semi-bald, with a
dark moustache and a distinguished air of meanness, disconcerted him one
day by remarking of an unknown person, "A half-bred lookin' chap; did n't
seem to know his mind." Shelton was harassed by a horrid doubt.

Everything seemed divided into classes, carefully docketed and valued.
For instance, a Briton was of more value than a man, and wives than
women. Those things or phases of life with which people had no personal
acquaintance were regarded with a faint amusement and a certain
disapproval. The principles of the upper class, in fact, were strictly
followed.

He was in that hypersenstive and nervous state favourable for recording
currents foreign to itself. Things he had never before noticed now had
profound effect on him, such as the tone in which men spoke of women--not
precisely with hostility, nor exactly with contempt best, perhaps,
described as cultured jeering; never, of course, when men spoke of their
own wives, mothers, sisters, or immediate friends, but merely when they
spoke of any other women. He reflected upon this, and came to the
conclusion that, among the upper classes, each man's own property was
holy, while other women were created to supply him with gossip, jests,
and spice. Another thing that struck him was the way in which the war
then going on was made into an affair of class. In their view it was a
baddish business, because poor hack Blank and Peter Blank-Blank had lost
their lives, and poor Teddy Blank had now one arm instead of two.
Humanity in general was omitted, but not the upper classes, nor,
incidentally, the country which belonged to them. For there they were,
all seated in a row, with eyes fixed on the horizon of their lawns.

Late one evening, billiards and music being over and the ladies gone,
Shelton returned from changing to hi