all too much exhausted for such a stupendous undertaking. New religions
depend in the first place upon the belief in great men, and where are
the great men of to-day? Only those whose coarse impudence has made them
forget their limitations start new religions nowadays. And look at the
result!"

"There are enough of them at all events," suggested St. Maur.

"Exactly,--their number is the best comment on their futility."

"But surely the effort, general as it is, shows that people agree with
you, and feel the need that you see and recognise?"

"Yes, but the arrogance with which they pretend to supply the need
themselves, is the best proof of how deeply they misunderstand the
gravity of their plight. Look at these Theosophists, Spiritualists, and
members of the Inner Light,--mere cliques, mere handfuls of uninspired
and uninspiring cranks. They'll never spread a uniform and unifying
culture. They cannot therefore make language once more a common currency
for thought."

Aubrey St. Maur had endeared himself to Lord Henry chiefly by the
inordinate beauty of his person, his exuberant health, and his modesty.
He was wealthy and the only son of a wealthy father. All the "loot" of
the de Porvilliers had come to him through his mother, and to Lord
Henry's surprise had failed to turn his head. On the contrary, it had if
anything filled him with a feeling of guilt, or perhaps that which is
most akin to guilt--obligation. And he had long wondered how best he
could discharge this obligation to the world. In Lord Henry's company he
had elected to find a solution to this problem.

But Lord Henry did not want the youth to join him on his journey to
China. The love the young nobleman still felt for his native country
bade him leave this promising member of it, if only as a forlorn hope,
to prove to Englishmen that here and there, at ever more distant
intervals, their blood was still capable of producing something that was
eminently desirable.

"You will succeed your father in the Upper House," he said to St. Maur
on this occasion, when the latter expressed the desire to become a pious
mandarin, "and you will, I trust, be an example of health and wisdom to
all. The faith in blood and lineage wants people like you. There is so
precious little to which it can be pinned nowadays."

"That's all very well," protested St. Maur. "But you are deserting the
battlefield, and leaving an unfledged pupil in charge. Is this nothing
to you? Ar