His dragoman placed a hand respectfully over the Angel's mouth. "Oh, sir!" he said soothingly, "do not spoil this charming moment. Hark! He is giving her a decree _nisi_, with costs. To-morrow it will be in all the papers, for it helps to sell them. See! She is withdrawing; we can now go." And he disengaged the Angel's wing. The Angel rose quickly and made his way towards the door. "I am going to walk out with her," he announced joyously. "I beseech you," said his dragoman, hurrying beside him, "remember the King's Proctor! Where is your chivalry? For _he_ has none, sir--not a little bit!" "Bring him to me; I will give it him!" said the Angel, kissing the tips of his fingers to the plaintiff, who was vanishing in the gloom of the fresh air. VII In the Strangers' room of the Strangers' Club the usual solitude was reigning when the Angel Æthereal entered. "You will be quiet here," said his dragoman, drawing up two leather chairs to the hearth, "and comfortable," he added, as the Angel crossed his legs. "After our recent experience, I thought it better to bring you where your mind would be composed, since we have to consider so important a subject as morality. There is no place, indeed, where we could be so completely sheltered from life, or so free to evolve from our inner consciousness the momentous conclusions of the armchair moralist. When you have had your sneeze," he added, glancing at the Angel, who was taking snuff, "I shall make known to you the conclusions I have formed in the course of a chequered career." "Before you do that," said the Angel, "it would perhaps be as well to limit the sphere of our inquiry." "As to that," remarked his dragoman, "I shall confine my information to the morals of the English since the opening of the Great Skirmish, in 1914, just a short generation of three and thirty years ago; and you will find my theme readily falls, sir, into the two main compartments of public and private morality. When I have finished you can ask me any questions." "Proceed!" said the Angel, letting his eyelids droop.