uation to admiration!"

"Indeed? Why?" Katherine inquired, painfully impressed by the renewed
bitterness of his manner.

"If you're fond of her that is convincingly sufficient. She and I have
never been very sympathetic, but that's a detail. I shall be gone.
Therefore pray have her, or anybody else you happen to fancy, so long
as you do have some one. You mustn't be here alone."

"Julius remains faithful through all chances and changes."

"But I imagine even Julius has sufficient social sense to perceive that
faithfulness may be a little out of place at this juncture. At least I
sincerely hope he'll perceive it, for otherwise he will have to be made
to do so--and that will be a nuisance."

"Dickie, Dickie, what are you implying?" Lady Calmady exclaimed. "By
what strange and unlovely thoughts are you possessed to-night?"

"I am learning to look at things as the average man of the world looks
at them, that's all," he said. "We have been too refined, you and I, to
be self-critical, with the consequence that we have allowed ourselves a
considerable degree of latitude in many directions. Julius' permanent
residence here ranks among the fine-fanciful disregardings of accepted
proprieties with which we have indulged ourselves. But spades are to be
called spades in future--at least by me. So, for the very same reason
that I go forth, like the average man of the world, to enjoy the
pleasures of sin for a season, do I object to Julius, or any other man,
being your guest during my absence, unless you have some woman of your
own position in life living here with you. The levels in social matters
have changed, once and for all. I have come to a sane mind and
renounced the eccentric subterfuges and paltry hypocrisies, by means of
which we have attempted, you and I, to keep disagreeable facts at bay.
Truth, naked and unabashable, is the only goddess I worship
henceforth."

He leaned forward, laying his hands upon the arms of his chair. His
manner was harsh still. But all coldness had departed from it, rather
did a white heat of passion consume him dreadful to witness.

"Yes, it is wisest to repeat that, so that, on your part, there may be
no excuse for any shadow of misapprehension. The levels have altered.
The old ones can never be restored. I want to have you grasp this,
mother--swallow it, digest it, so that it passes into fibre and tissue
of your every thought about me. For an acutely, unscientific, an
ingeniously unreaso