ny. Enough that for the present he
had an aim which he saw as a reality.

On his return home, he found a London letter awaiting him. It was with
a nervous shrug that he saw the writing of Mrs. Toplady. Addressing him
at his club, she invited him to dine on an evening a fortnight hence,
if he chanced to be in town.

"You heard, of course," she added, "of the defeat of Mr. Lashmar at
Hollingford. It seems to have been inevitable."

So Lashmar had been defeated. The Hollingford election interested
Dymchurch so little that he had never inquired as to its result; in
truth, he had forgotten all about it.

"I fear Mr. Lashmar is rather disappointing. Rumour says that the
philosophical theory of life and government which he put before us as
original was taken word for word from a French book which he took for
granted no one would have read. I hope this is not true; it has a very
unpleasant sound."

Quite as unpleasant, thought Dymchurch, was Mrs. Toplady's zeal in
spreading the rumour. He found no difficulty in crediting it. The
bio-sociological theory had occupied his thoughts for a time, and, in
reflecting upon it now, he found it as plausible as any other; but it
had no more power to interest him. Lashmar, perhaps, was mere sophist,
charlatan, an unscrupulous journalist who talked instead of writing.
Words, words! How sick he was of the universal babble! The time had
taken for its motto that counsel of Mephisto: _Vor allem haltet euch an
Worte_! And how many of these loud talkers believed the words they
uttered, or had found them in their own minds?

And how many preachers of Socialism--in this, that or the other form,
had in truth the socialistic spirit? Lashmar, with his emphasis on the
obligation of social service--was he not simply an ambitious struggler
and intriguer, careless of everything but his own advancement? Probably
enough. And, on the whole, was there ever an age so rank with
individualism as this of ours, which chatters ceaselessly of
self-subdual to the common cause?

"I, too," thus he thought, "am as much an individualist as the others.
If I said that I cared a rap for mankind at large, I should be
phrase-making. Only, thank heaven! I don't care to advertise myself, I
don't care to make money. I ask only to be left alone, and to satisfy
in quiet my sense of self-respect."

On the morrow, he was gone.

CHAPTER XXIX

"When you receive this letter, you will have already seen the result. I