“Dear me!” cried Mrs. Hay, who overheard this speech, “I shall certainly write to Mr. De Witt. Why don’t _you_ say such intense things to me, Mr. Van Kull?” “Because I daren’t,” said Van Kull, meaningly. “Please--I’ll promise not to write to Wilton,” retorted she. “Poor Wilton! he must find it so hot in Washington.” How pleasant it is to feel ourselves moving above the world like gods! How pleasant it is, like gods, to make of our own rules of conduct our laws of good and evil! And what responsibility have we for the rest of humanity? They should not all attempt to be in fashion. Fashion is for us alone--us few, who transcend common laws. Yet it is relying on the many abiding by the humdrum rules of gravity that the few can flutter and glitter freely on the surface. In the evening there was a moon (which shineth alike upon the just and on the unjust; particularly the latter, for moonlight has no conscience), and the warm night attracted them forth from the dreary hotel parlor. They wandered up the hill, through pastures, to where there was a cliff, above huge chasms of a quarry, carven deep into the living rock. Here they met some Italian laborers; they were living in little wooden huts about the quarry, with their womankind, richly, upon seventy cents a day. Their views of life were much the same as their own, thought Derwent, looking at the merry party; with only, perhaps, a little less morality, a little more religion, these day laborers, than had they. Caryl Wemyss conversed with them a little in their own language, at which they were greatly pleased. They were citizens, and had come over to make their portion of our great democracy; but they sighed for the sunny skies of Sicily as yet. Wemyss was walking with Mrs. Gower, and as they turned back they found Haviland sitting with Kitty Farnum on a stone wall in the long grass; the moon lit up her fair face and her eyes, which were shining; and all about them lay the petals of a rose that she had pulled to pieces. “How like Faust and Marguerite!” said Mrs. Gower. “Say, rather, Psyche with her Dipsychus,” said Mr. Wemyss. “Who is Dipsychus?” said Flossie Gower. “Have you never met him, then?” said Wemyss. And coming back, she took his arm across the fields. Wemyss pressed it gently, and began to analyze himself, whether he was in love with her or not. It rather flattered him to think he was. CHAPTER XXI. ARTHUR GOES HOME.