oing it--and then look at a
society woman done up, with a maid in attendance and a mirror lighted
up, as if it were an actor's dressing-table--my heavens, you're
liable to make a comparison then."

Dolly shuddered at the picture. "I think you've got a loathsome mind,
Jack," she said with conviction.

"Of course you do, and you're quite right. It is a loathsome idea
to think that a man of the type of Sargent is of the same noble
profession as the pavement artist. You can only disinfect its
loathsomeness in a degree by assuring people that they don't work
in the same street. But it always is loathsome in this country to
see facts as they really are, and when you know of society women who
send nude portraits of themselves--"

"Jack!"

"--Up to wealthy men whom they have not had the pleasure of meeting,
it's naturally a beastly conception of life to compare them with
those unfortunate women whose existence of course we all know about,
but would much rather not discuss. I really quite agree with you,
I have a loathsome mind."

Dolly rose with perfect dignity to her feet. "Do you think you ought
to talk about things like that to me, Jack?"

"I don't know. I suppose it is questionable whether one ought to treat
one's sister as a simple innocent, or talk to her, as undoubtedly
you do talk in society to other men's wives and other men's daughters.
I think myself that it doesn't really matter. You're not thinking
of the impropriety of it. That doesn't worry you in the least. Many
a man has talked to you sympathetically on similar subjects before.
You've listened to them. The fault in me is the gentle vein of irony.
Irony's an insidious thing when you grind it out of the truth. Sit
down, Dolly; I won't talk about it any more. I'll pour the sweetest
nothings you ever heard into your ears. Come on--sit down. It's not
much after nine. I only wanted to show you why I don't appreciate
society. I wouldn't mind it, if it admitted its vices and called them
by their names; I think I'd permit myself to be dragged into it by
a woman who was clean right through; but as it is, and as it describes
itself, I prefer the pavement artist with his little sack of coloured
chalks. There's not much reality, I admit, in his portrait of Lord
Roberts or his beautiful pink and blue mackerel with its high light,
that never shone on land or sea, except on the scales of that fish;
there's not much reality in them, when they're finished, but there's
a