said; "it's a touch of--what is it?--erethism."

His voice was hoarse, and his Remarks, like the Man of Kent's, were
Rambling.

"Where do you come from?" he said.

"I come from Woking," I replied, "and my nature is Wobbly. I love my
love with a W because she is Woluptuous. I took her to the sign of the
Wombat and read her _The War of the Worlds_, and treated her to Winkles,
Winolia and Wimbos. Her name is Wenus, and she comes from the Milky
Way."

He looked at me doubtfully, then shot out a pointed tongue.

"It is you," he said, "the man from Woking. The Johnny what writes for
_Nature_. By the way," he interjected, "don't you think some of your
stuff is too--what is it?--esoteric? The man," he continued, "as killed
the curate in the last book. By the way, it _was_ you as killed the
curate?"

"Artilleryman," I replied, "I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little
meat-chopper. And you, I presume, are the Artilleryman who attended my
lectures on the Eroticism of the Elasmobranch?"

"That's me," he said; "but Lord, how you've changed. Only a fortnight
ago, and now you're stone-bald!"

I stared, marvelling at his gift of perception.

"What have you been living on?" I asked.

"Oh," he said, "immature potatoes and Burgundy" (I give the catalogue so
precisely because it has nothing to do with the story), "uncooked steak
and limp lettuces, precocious carrots and Bartlett pears, and thirteen
varieties of fluid beef, which I cannot name except at the usual
advertisement rates."

"But can you sleep after it?" said I.

"Blimy! yes," he replied; "I'm fairly--what is it?--eupeptic."

"It's all over with mankind," I muttered.

"It _is_ all over," he replied. "The Wenuses 'ave only lost one
Crinoline, just one, and they keep on coming; they're falling somewhere
every night. Nothing's to be done. We're beat!"

I made no answer. I sat staring, pulverised by the colossal
intellectuality of this untutored private. He had attended only three of
my lectures, and had never taken any notes.

"This isn't a war," he resumed; "it never was a war. These 'ere Wenuses
they wants to be Mas, that's the long and the short of it. Only----"

"Yes?" I said, more than ever impressed by the man's pyramidal
intuition.

"They can't stand the climate. They're too--what is it?--exotic."

We sat staring at each other.

"And what will they do?" I humbly asked, grovelling unscientifically at
his feet.

"That's what I've been thinking,