He tossed down his pencil in disgust and swung round towards the fire. It was Clytie herself, then, that he missed. He missed her in spite of her being a woman, he told himself. And yet the picture rose before his mind of Clytie's dainty room and Clytie sitting there opposite to him, her hand, with falling lace at wrist, pressed into the softness of her hair. Why had she not written a line to him? Yes, he missed her. But why should that make his work distasteful? He was puzzled. One thing alone was clear, his loneliness was growing intolerable. He threw on his waterproof, and, leaving his work, trudged through the rain to the “monastery,” at South Kensington. Wither was alone. Fairfax and Greene were dining out. The little man had been too lazy and sybaritic to face the cold and wet outside. He had clad himself in pyjamas and dressing-gown, and was reading a French novel on the couch drawn up in front of the fire. His diminutive figure looked absurdly small and wizened in his loose wrap. He nodded affectionately at Kent, explained briefly the fact of his being alone, and, while Kent was hunting in a familiar corner for the pair of slippers always there in readiness for his use, went on with his reading. “Get me some whiskey, old chap,” he said without looking up. “I have been dying for some this last hour and I have been too lazy to stir off the sofa.” Kent, as usual, supplied Wither's wants and poured out a glass for himself. “Lazy little beggar,” he said kindly as he sat down in the great saddle-bag chair. “How do you manage to get through your work?” Wither laughed. “I thought you knew better than to ask me that.” It was a tradition in the “monastery” that Wither never did any work. They paid him at his office for lending it a gentlemanly tone. As a matter of fact, like most clever, lazy men, he generally did an ordinary man's day's work in a few hours. He stretched himself out luxuriously and lit a cigarette. “Have you ever read this?” he asked, holding up his novel. It was Bourget's “Cruelle Enigme.” Kent nodded. “I skimmed it through here one night while waiting for you. I have no patience with that sort of thing.” “Possibly not,” remarked Wither, “but that's a fact about yourself, and not about the book.” “I don't believe it is human life,” replied Kent. “People can't make animal passion the keynote of their lives nowadays.” “Why not nowadays?” “The conditions of life prevent it. The savage has furious brute instincts, which he gratifies occasionally, when his mind is not taken up with fighting and hunting for his food. It may be the guiding principle in a splendid barbarism like some Eastern courts, where men have little else to think of. But in our modern civilisation there are other interests too absorbing. The hurry of life is too great.” “What about the empty-minded women you are always railing at?”