s.

"Life without an ideal--" repeated Mr. Pembroke, and then stopped, for
his mouth was full of coffee grounds. The same affliction had overtaken
Agnes. After a little jocose laughter they departed to their lodgings,
and Rickie, having seen them as far as the porter's lodge, hurried,
singing as he went, to Ansell's room, burst open the door, and said,
"Look here! Whatever do you mean by it?"

"By what?" Ansell was sitting alone with a piece of paper in front of
him. On it was a diagram--a circle inside a square, inside which was
again a square.

"By being so rude. You're no gentleman, and I told her so." He slammed
him on the head with a sofa cushion. "I'm certain one ought to be
polite, even to people who aren't saved." ("Not saved" was a phrase they
applied just then to those whom they did not like or intimately
know.) "And I believe she is saved. I never knew any one so always
good-tempered and kind. She's been kind to me ever since I knew her. I
wish you'd heard her trying to stop her brother: you'd have certainly
come round. Not but what he was only being nice as well. But she is
really nice. And I thought she came into the room so beautifully. Do you
know--oh, of course, you despise music--but Anderson was playing Wagner,
and he'd just got to the part where they sing

'Rheingold!
'Rheingold!

and the sun strikes into the waters, and the music, which up to then has
so often been in E flat--"

"Goes into D sharp. I have not understood a single word, partly because
you talk as if your mouth was full of plums, partly because I don't know
whom you're talking about." "Miss Pembroke--whom you saw."

"I saw no one."

"Who came in?"

"No one came in."

"You're an ass!" shrieked Rickie. "She came in. You saw her come in. She
and her brother have been to dinner."

"You only think so. They were not really there."

"But they stop till Monday."

"You only think that they are stopping."

"But--oh, look here, shut up! The girl like an empress--"

"I saw no empress, nor any girl, nor have you seen them."

"Ansell, don't rag."

"Elliot, I never rag, and you know it. She was not really there."

There was a moment's silence. Then Rickie exclaimed, "I've got you. You
say--or was it Tilliard?--no, YOU say that the cow's there. Well--there
these people are, then. Got you. Yah!"

"Did it never strike you that phenomena may be of two kinds: ONE, those
which have a real existence, such as the cow; TWO, th