r hearing the
truth? It is simply because the men and women of Society have
exhausted every means of self-gratification, that in a sort of
unwholesome reaction they turn towards the things as far as possible
removed from those with which they are surfeited. But I will leave
Father Cresswell alone. I will ask you whether it is not the bizarre,
the grotesque in art, which to-day wins most favor. I will turn to the
making of books--I avoid the term literature--and I will ask you
whether it is not the extravagant, the impossible, the deformed, in
style and matter, which is most eagerly read. The simplest things in
life should convince one. The novelist's hero is no longer the fine,
handsome young fellow of twenty years ago. He is something between
forty and fifty, if not deformed, at least decrepit with dissipations,
and with the gift of fascination, whatever that may mean, in place of
the simpler attributes of a few decades ago. And the heroine!--There
is no more book-muslin and innocence. She has, as a rule, green eyes;
she is middle-aged, and if she has not been married before, she has
had her affairs. Everything obvious in life, from politics to
mutton-chops, is absolutely barred by anyone with any pretensions to
intellect to-day."

"One wonders," Rochester murmured, "how in the course of your long
life, Mr. Chalmers, you have been able to see so far and truthfully
into the heart of things!"

Chalmers bowed.

"Mr. Rochester," he said, "it is the newcomer in life, as in many
other things, who sees most of the game."

The conversation drifted away. Rochester was reminded of it only when
driving home that night with his wife. Again, as they took their
places in the electric brougham, he was conscious of something
changed, not only in the woman herself, but in her demeanor towards
him.

"Do you mind," he asked, soon after they started, "just dropping me at
the club? It is scarcely out of your way, and I feel that I need a
whiskey and soda, and a game of billiards, to take the taste of that
young man's talk out of my mouth. What a sickly brood of chickens the
Duchess does encourage, to be sure!"

"I wonder if you'd mind not going to the club to-night, Henry?" Lady
Mary asked quietly.

He turned toward her in surprise.

"Why, certainly not," he answered. "Have we to go on anywhere?"

She shook her head.

"No!" she said. "Only I feel I'd like to talk to you for a little
time, if you don't mind. It's nothing very