And all these nets were spread for somebody's money--a good deal of it Cosimo's. It had been the same, though perhaps not quite so bad, at Ludlow. That experiment on the country-side had been alarmingly costly. And all this did not include the dozens and dozens of nets of narrower mesh. The "Novum" might gulp down money by the hundred, but the lesser things were hardly less formidable in the sum of them--subscriptions, contributions, gifts, loans, investments, shares in the Eden and the Book Shop, mortgages, second mortgages, subsidies, sums to "tide over," backings, guarantees, losses cut, more good money sent to bring back the bad, fresh means of spending devised by somebody or other almost every day. It had begun to weary even Amory. The people who came to The Witan became rather curiously better-dressed the longer their visiting continued; but the things they professed to hold dear appeared very little further advanced. All that first brightness and promise had gone. Amory's interest had gone. She wanted to escape from it all, and to go away with Edgar appeared once more to be the readiest way out. But, though she might now wish to keep Walter Wyron out of it all, that did not necessarily mean that Walter would be kept out. This _ex-officio_ specialist on the (preferably female) heart, this professional rectifier of unfortunate marriages, had not done a number of years' platform-work without having discovered the peculiar beauties of the _argumentum ad hominem_, and it was one of his practices to enforce his arguments with "Take the case of Brit here"--or "Let's get down to the concrete: suppose Amory--" And these descents to the particular had always a curiously accusatory effect. Walter, interrupting Amory's meditation, broke into one of them now. "But my dear chap,"--this was to Cosimo,"--I can't imagine what's come over all of you to-night! First Amory, now you! You're usually quicker than this! Let's take a case.--Brit here----" One sterno-mastoid majestically turned the caryatid's head. Again Miss Belchamber's grand thorax worked as if somebody had put a penny into the slot. "What?" she said. "Quiet, Brit; I'm only using you as an illustration.--Suppose Brit here was to develop a passion for somebody--Cosimo, say; yes, Cosimo'll do capitally; awfully good instance of the cant that's commonly talked about 'treachery' and 'under his own roof' and all the rest of it--as if a roof wasn't a roof and it hadn't got to be under somebody's--unless they went out on the Heath!--Well, suppose it was to happen to Cosimo and Brit; what then? We're civilized, I hope. We're a little above the animals, I venture to think. Amory wouldn't fly at Brit's eyes, and Brit's father wouldn't come round with a razor to cut Cosimo's throat. In fact----" "My fa-ther al-ways uses a safety-razor," said Miss Belchamber with a reminiscent air.