rth!
Sociology cannot mean anything very serious for you. Your perspective is
naturally distorted."

"What about yourself?" he asked pertinently.

"The vanity of us women!" she murmured. "I have grown to look upon
myself as being an exception. I forget that there might be others. You
might even be one of our prophets--a Paul Fiske in disguise."

His eyes narrowed a little as he looked at her closely. From across the
table, the Bishop broke off an interesting discussion on the subject
of his addresses to the working classes, and the Earl set down his
wineglass with an impatient gesture.

"Does no one really know," Mr. Stenson asked, "who Paul Fiske is?"

"No one, sir," Mr. Hannaway Wells replied. "I thought it wise, a short
time ago, to set on foot the most searching enquiries, but they were
absolutely fruitless."

The Bishop coughed.

"I must plead guilty," he confessed, "to having visited the offices of
The Monthly Review with the same object. I left a note for him there,
in charge of the editor, inviting him to a conference at my house. I
received no reply. His anonymity seems to be impregnable."

"Whoever he may be," the Earl declared, "he ought to be muzzled. He is a
traitor to his country."

"I cannot agree with you, Lord Maltenby," the Bishop said firmly. "The
very danger of the man's doctrines lies in their clarity of thought,
their extraordinary proximity to the fundamental truths of life."

"The man is, at any rate," Doctor Lennard interposed, "the most
brilliant anonymous writer since the days of Swift and the letters of
Junius."

Mr. Stenson for a moment hesitated. He seemed uncertain whether or no to
join in the conversation. Finally, impulse swayed him.

"Let us all be thankful," he said, "that Paul Fiske is content with the
written word. If the democracy of England found themselves to-day with
such a leader, it is he who would be ruling the country, and not I."

"The man is a pacifist!" the Earl protested.

"So we all are," the Bishop declared warmly. "We are all pacifists in
the sense that we are lovers of peace. There is not one of us who does
not deplore the horrors of to-day. There is not one of us who is not
passionately seeking for the master mind which can lead us out of it."

"There is only one way out," the Earl insisted, "and that is to beat the
enemy."

"It is the only obvious way," Julian intervened, joining in the
conversation for the first time, "but meanwhile, with every