e boy exclaimed abruptly. To compare absinthe to a
good act seemed to him quite intolerable.

He let his rose-tipped cigarette go out, and was glad when the dressing
gong sounded in the hall.

Miss Haddon sprang up from the floor briskly.

"I rather admire you for drinking this stuff," she said. "I am sure you
do it to mortify the flesh. A Lenten penance out of Lent is most
invigorating to the mind."

As Claude went up to dress, he felt as if he never wished to touch
absinthe again. The glitter of its personality was dulled for him now
that it was looked upon as merely a nasty sort of medicine to be
indulged in as a mortification of the flesh, like wearing a hair shirt,
or rejecting meat on Fridays. He found Miss Haddon painfully prosaic. It
seemed almost silly to be a decadent in her company. To feel Turkish
alone was graceful and quaint, almost intellectual, but to have an old
lady feeling Turkish, too, and squatting on the floor to emphasise the
sensation, was tragic, seemed to bring imbecility very near. Claude
dressed with unusual agitation, and made a distinct failure of his tie.

All through dinner Miss Haddon talked optimistically about her prospects
as a successful decadent, much as if she were discussing her future on
the Stock Exchange, or as the editor of a paper. She calculated that at
her present rate of progress she ought to be almost on a level with her
guest by the end of the week, and spoke hopefully of ceasing to take any
interest in the ordinary facts of life, of learning a proper contempt
for all healthy-minded humanity, and of appreciating at its proper value
what seems to ordinary people, weak-kneed affection in literature, in
art, and, above all, in movement and in appearance. Her bright eyes
flashed upon Claude beneath her crown of powdered hair, as she talked,
and the big room rang with her jovial voice.

The boy began to feel exceedingly confused. Yet he had never been less
bored. Miss Haddon might be stout and sixty-four. Nevertheless, her net
personality was far less wearisome than that of many a town-bred sylph.
Unconsciously Claude ate with a hearty appetite, indulged immoderately
in excellent roast beef, and even swallowed a beautifully-cooked Spanish
onion without thinking of the committal of a crime. During dessert Miss
Haddon gave him a racy description of a rural cricket match and of the
supper and speeches which followed it, and he found himself laughing
heartily and wishing he