and measured the space under the windows for two
possible new book-cases. He would need them soon; and they would make
the room look better filled. It was a beautiful room, a beautiful flat.
From every point of view he was leading a very beautiful life. . . .

The clock struck eleven; and his parlour-maid came in with a syphon,
decanter and glasses. He did not drink whiskey once a month, but the
tray added a roundness and finish which the Spartans at Lashmar
Mill-House were incapable of appreciating. Were they Spartans--or simply
people without his instinct for life?

He filled a tumbler with soda-water and subsided into his deepest
arm-chair, looking lazily round the room, drawing pleasurably at his
cigar and wrapping himself in the softest down of contentment. His diary
was within reach, and he thought over his abbreviated week-end. Agnes
Waring had dropped out of his life; Barbara had never come into it.
There was nothing to record but the names of his mother's guests at
dinner. . . .

* * * * *

"_There are few things so exhausting as the quiet of the
country._"--From the Diary of Eric Lane.

CHAPTER FOUR

INTERMEZZO

What hadst thou to do being born,
Mother, when winds were at ease
As a flower of the spring-time of corn,
A flower of the foam of the seas?
For bitter thou wast from thy birth,
Aphrodite, a mother of strife;
For before thee some rest was on earth
A little respite from tears
A little pleasure of life;
For life was not then as thou art,
But as one that waxeth in years
Sweet-spoken, a fruitful wife;
Earth had no thorn, and desire
No sting, neither death any dart;
What hadst thou to do amongst these,
Thou, clothed with a burning fire,
Thou, girt with sorrow of heart,
Thou sprung of the seed of the seas
As an ear from a seed of corn
As a brand plucked forth of a pyre,
As a ray shed forth of the moon
For division of soul and disease,
For a dart and a sting and a thorn?
What ailed thee then to be born?
SWINBURNE: "ATALANTA IN CALYDON."

1

Moral delinquency in England, if of sufficiently ancient lineage, grows
venial with the years and, if carried out with adequate ruthlessness or
at least success, may quickly find itself invested with grandeur. No one
boasts of his own illegitimacy, but