“‘This charming little book.’... _The Scotsman._ ‘This farrago of obscenity, slander and false psychology.’... _Darlington Echo._ ‘Mr. Gumbril’s first cousin is St. Francis Xavier, his second cousin is the Earl of Rochester, his third cousin is the Man of Feeling, his fourth cousin is David Hume.’... _Court Journal._” Gumbril was already tired of this joke. “When I consider how my light is spent,” he went on, “when I consider!... Herr Jesu, as Fraulein Nimmernein used to exclaim at the critical moment. Consider, dear cow, consider. This is not the time of year for grass to grow. Consider, dear cow, consider, consider.” He got up from his chair and tiptoed across the room to the writing-table. An Indian dagger lay next to the blotting-pad; Mrs. Viveash used it as a paper-knife. Gumbril picked it up, executed several passes with it. “Thumb on the blade,” he said, “and strike upwards. On guard. Lunge. To the hilt it penetrates. Poniard at the tip”—he ran the blade between his fingers—“caress by the time it reaches the hilt. Z—zip.” He put down the knife and stopping for a moment to make a grimace at himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, he went back to his chair. At seven o’clock Mrs. Viveash woke up. She shook her head to feel if the pain were still rolling about loose inside her skull. “I really believe I’m all right,” she said. She jumped up. “Come on,” she cried. “I feel ready for anything.” “And I feel like so much food for worms,” said Gumbril. “Still, _Versiam’ a tazza piena il generoso umor_.” He hummed the Drinking Song out of _Robert the Devil_, and to that ingenuously jolly melody they left the house. Their taxi that evening cost them several pounds. They made the man drive back and forth, like a shuttle, from one end of London to the other. Every time they passed through Piccadilly Circus Mrs. Viveash leant out of the window to look at the sky signs dancing their unceasing St. Vitus’s dance above the monument to the Earl of Shaftesbury. “How I adore them!” she said the first time they passed them. “Those wheels that whizz round till the sparks fly out from under them: that rushing motor, and that lovely bottle of port filling the glass and then disappearing and reappearing and filling it again. Too lovely.” “Too revolting,” Gumbril corrected her. “These things are the epileptic symbol of all that’s most bestial and idiotic in contemporary life. Look at those beastly things and then look at that.” He pointed to the County Fire Office on the northern side of the Circus. “There stands decency, dignity, beauty, repose. And there flickers, there gibbers and twitches—what? Restlessness, distraction, refusal to think, anything for an unquiet life....” “What a delicious pedant you are!” She turned away from the window, put her hands on his shoulders and looked at him. “Too exquisitely ridiculous!” And she kissed him.