“In America,” retorted Wemyss. “But even a man who has not married has some social rights. I like a society of men and women--not of Jacks and Gills. But if I tell Mrs. Grundy her gown is becoming, likely as not she’ll call for the police, in this country.” “I think she’ll take a bit more than that without bolting,” laughed Jimmy De Witt. “The fact is,” said Wemyss, who felt that he was becoming epigrammatic, “all worldly pleasures, from the original apple, rest on the taste of the forbidden fruit. The joys of war, the delights of business, the pleasures of gossip, the satisfaction of swearing,--they’re all the fun of breaking some commandment. Voltaire never would have put pen to paper but for the first; the pleasure of art is to worship graven images; the spice of newspapers is the false witness that they bear against your neighbor. And what becomes of fashionable life without the tenth, or a faint and ever-present memory of the seventh? Now all Americans covet their neighbor’s bank-account; but they are far too practical to covet their neighbor’s wife. Positively, we are too virtuous to be happy: for this Arcadian state of things makes society necessarily dull. Like most of the devil’s institutions, it requires considerable red pepper.” Arthur stared at Wemyss, much astonished; but all three ladies seemed to take it as very excellent fooling indeed. Even Jimmy looked as if he didn’t wholly understand it, but knew it must be very good. “But it’s the paradise of girls. It offers every opportunity to ardent youth. It shows its prizes in a glamour of light and dress-making, just as a Parisian shopkeeper puts gas-reflectors before his window. Bright eyes and white shoulders are garnished in extraordinary silks and satins; a blare of fiddles and trumpets fills up vacancies in their intellect; and thus, with all their charms enhanced, they are dangled before the masculine eye when his discernment has been previously befuddled with champagne?” “Positively,” laughed Mrs. Gower, “we must leave you to your cigars. There’s no knowing what you’ll be saying next--and before an unmarried lady, too. Pussie, my dear, go out first, and deliver Mr. Wemyss from temptation.” The three ladies rose, and the men drew back their chairs. “You must really look out, Mr. Wemyss,” said Mrs. Malgam; “in one of your lyric moments you’ll forget that some girl isn’t married, and be engaged before you know it.” Wemyss shuddered. “Ah, my dear lady, I wish I could forget that you were married----” “Hush, hush,” cried Mrs. Gower, rapping Wemyss’s knuckles with her fan, “and _soyez sage_, when we are gone.”