nt; and in the country--forgive
me--sometimes the young devil of the day."

"I am decadent, Miss Haddon," Claude said with a gentle pride that was
not wholly ungraceful.

The elderly lady swept him with a bright look of fresh and healthy
interest.

"How exciting," she exclaimed, after a moment's decisive pause, but with
a completely natural air. "You are the first I have seen. For Jimmy
isn't one, is he?"

"Jimmy! No. He plays football, and eats cold roast beef and cheese for
lunch."

"Do tell me--how does one do it?"

She seemed intensely interested, and was merrily munching an apple grown
in one of her own orchards.

Claude raised his dark eyebrows.

"I beg your pardon?"

"How does one become a decadent? I have heard so much about you all,
about your cleverness, and your clothes, and the things you write, and
draw, and smoke, and think, and--and eat--"

She seemed suddenly struck by a bright idea.

"Oh, Mr Melville!" she exclaimed, leaning forward behind the great
silver urn, and darting at him a glance of imploring earnestness, "will
you do me a favour? We are left to ourselves for a whole week. Teach me,
teach me to be a decadent."

"But I thought you were going to teach me to be yo--" Claude began, and
stopped just in time. "I mean--er--"

He paused, and they gazed at each other. There was meditation in the
boy's eyes. He was wondering seriously whether it would be possible for
an elderly spinster lady, of countrified morals and rural procedure, to
be decadent. She was rather stout, too, and appeared painfully healthy.

"Will you?" Miss Haddon breathed across the urn and the teapot.

"Well, we might try," Claude answered doubtfully.

He was remarking to himself:--

"Poor, dear Jimmy! He certainly doesn't understand his aunt!"

She was murmuring in her mind: "I have always heard they have no sense
of humour!"

III

"Mr Melville, Mr Melville," cried Miss Haddon's voice towards evening on
the following day, "the absinthe has arrived!"

Claude came out languidly into the hall.

"Has it?" he said dreamily.

"Yes, and Paul Verlaine's poetry, and the blue books--I mean the yellow
books, and" (rummaging in a just-opened parcel) "yes, here are two
novels by Catulle Mendez, and a box of those rose-tipped cigarettes.
Now, what ought I to do? Shall we have some absinthe instead of our tea,
or what?"

Claude looked at her with a momentary suspicion, but her grey hair
crowned an eager face dec