peritifs in the lounge under the
stairs. Somehow or other, there was a feeling that many of the old ties
had been broken. Tallente stood for new and menacing things in
politics. He had to a certain extent cut himself adrift from the world
which starts at Eton and Oxford and ends by making mild puns on the
judicial bench, or uttering sonorous platitudes from a properly
accredited seat in the House.

Tallente, fully appreciating the atmosphere, nevertheless made strenuous
and not unsuccessful efforts to pick up the old threads. He abandoned
even the moderation of his daily life. He drank cocktails, champagne
and port, laughed heartily at the stories of the day and ransacked his
brain to cap them. Of bridge, unfortunately, he knew nothing, but he
played pool with some success, and left the club late, leaving behind
him curiously mingled opinions as to the cause for this sudden return to
his old haunts.

He himself walked through the streets, on his way homeward, conscious of
at least partial success, feeling the pleasurable warmth of the wine he
had drunk and the companionship for which he had so strenuously sought.
He found himself thinking almost enviously of the men with whom he had
associated,--Philipson, with whom he had been at college, with three
plays running at different theatres, interested, even fascinated by his
work, chaffing gaily with his principal actor as to the rendering of
some of his lines. Then there was Fardell, also a schoolfellow, now a
police magistrate, full of dry and pleasant humour, called by his
intimates "The Beak "; Amberson, poseur and dilettante thirty years ago,
but always a good fellow, now an acknowledged master of English prose
and a critic whose word was unquestioned. These men, one and all,
seemed to be up to the neck in life, kept young and human by the taste
of it upon their palate. The contemplation of their whole-sided
existence, their sound combination of work and play, produced in him a
sort of jealousy, for he knew that there was something behind it, which
he lacked.

The night was bright and dry and there were still crowds about Leicester
Square, Piccadilly Circle and Piccadilly itself. As he walked, he
looked into the faces of the women who passed him by, struggling against
his old abhorrence as against one of the sickly offshoots of an
over-eclectic epicureanism. They typified not vice but weakness, the
unhappy result of man's inevitable revolt against unnatural laws. Ye