elded. On my way to her I met Clovelly and Colonel
Ryder. Hungerford was walking between them. Colonel Ryder said: "I've
been saving that story for you, Doctor; better come and get it while
it's hot."

This was a promised tale of the taking of Mobile in the American Civil
War.

At any other time the invitation would have pleased me mightily; for,
apart from the other two, Hungerford's brusque and original conversation
was always a pleasure--so were his cheroots; but now I was under an
influence selfish in its source. At the same time I felt that Hungerford
was storing up some acute criticism of me, and that he might let me hear
it any moment. I knew, numbering the order of his duties, that he could
have but a very short time to spare for gossip at this juncture, yet I
said that I could not join them for half an hour or so. Hungerford had
a fashion of looking at me searchingly from under his heavy brows, and I
saw that he did so now with impatience, perhaps contempt. I was certain
that he longed to thrash me. That was his idea of punishment and
penalty. He linked his arm in those of the other two men, and they moved
on, Colonel Ryder saying that he would keep the story till I came and
would wait in the smoking-room for me.

The concert was still on when I sat down beside Mrs. Falchion. "You
seemed to enjoy Miss Treherne's singing?" she said cordially enough as
she folded her hands in her lap.

"Yes, I thought it beautiful. Didn't you?"

"Pretty, most pretty; and admirable in technique and tone; but she has
too much feeling to be really artistic. She felt the thing, instead of
pretending to feel it--which makes all the difference. She belongs to
a race of delightful women, who never do any harm, whom everybody calls
good, and who are very severe on those who do not pretend to be good.
Still, all of that pleasant race will read their husband's letters and
smuggle. They have no civic virtues. Yet they would be shocked to bathe
on the beach without a machine, as American women do,--and they look for
a new fall of Jerusalem when one of their sex smokes a cigarette after
dinner. Now, I do not smoke cigarettes after dinner, so I can speak
freely. But, at the same time, I do not smuggle, and I do bathe on the
beach without a machine--when I am in a land where there are no sharks
and no taboo. If morally consumptive people were given a few years in
the South Seas, where they could not get away from nature, there would
be mo