s after all very fine. Now you're thoroughly modern and yet
are not at all common. So many of the moderns we see are such very poor
stuff. If they're the children of the future we're willing to die young.
Of course the ancients too are often very tiresome. My wife and I like
everything that's really new--not the mere pretence of it. There's
nothing new, unfortunately, in ignorance and stupidity. We see plenty
of that in forms that offer themselves as a revelation of progress, of
light. A revelation of vulgarity! There's a certain kind of vulgarity
which I believe is really new; I don't think there ever was anything
like it before. Indeed I don't find vulgarity, at all, before the
present century. You see a faint menace of it here and there in the
last, but to-day the air has grown so dense that delicate things
are literally not recognised. Now, we've liked you--!" With which
he hesitated a moment, laying his hand gently on Goodwood's knee and
smiling with a mixture of assurance and embarrassment. "I'm going to say
something extremely offensive and patronising, but you must let me
have the satisfaction of it. We've liked you because--because you've
reconciled us a little to the future. If there are to be a certain
number of people like you--a la bonne heure! I'm talking for my wife as
well as for myself, you see. She speaks for me, my wife; why shouldn't
I speak for her? We're as united, you know, as the candlestick and the
snuffers. Am I assuming too much when I say that I think I've understood
from you that your occupations have been--a--commercial? There's a
danger in that, you know; but it's the way you have escaped that
strikes us. Excuse me if my little compliment seems in execrable taste;
fortunately my wife doesn't hear me. What I mean is that you might have
been--a--what I was mentioning just now. The whole American world was
in a conspiracy to make you so. But you resisted, you've something about
you that saved you. And yet you're so modern, so modern; the most modern
man we know! We shall always be delighted to see you again."

I have said that Osmond was in good humour, and these remarks will give
ample evidence of the fact. They were infinitely more personal than he
usually cared to be, and if Caspar Goodwood had attended to them more
closely he might have thought that the defence of delicacy was in rather
odd hands. We may believe, however, that Osmond knew very well what
he was about, and that if he chose t