We had at school a literature master who, in the course of many hundreds of discourses, made two remarks which have never left me; or would it not be fairer to say that of the hundreds of lectures which I heard from a certain literature master I have succeeded in retaining two injunctions? One was the comment (which he had from Dr. Johnson) that repetition is a fault rarely committed by bad writers, and the other, that what we call coincidences should never be noticed. This being so, I cannot describe as a coincidence the fact that the young Socialist at Dabney's turns out to be our own Socialist of the top floor of whose profounder sincerities Mrs. Wiles is so sceptical. I saw him the next day both enter the house and leave it, banging the door with a vehemence that would break up any delicately organized communistic home; and since then we have met in mutual recognition and have conversed. Spanton seems to be very much in earnest--a boyish figure of about twenty-six, clean shaven, but without the soft brown clothes, costly Jaegerisms, and other external insignia of his kind. On the contrary, he is a bit of a dandy, uses quite superlative soap, and has a manicure set. It has been said that nothing is more annoying than to be agreed with when one is indulging a mood of self-depreciation. Well, Spanton will never be annoyed that way. "They're a foolish lot," he said, referring to the company at Dabney's. "They go there every week just to cackle, and none of them ever lives at all. Except possibly that blackguard, Rudson-Wayte, and he ought to be in gaol. But the whole world's like that. All my friends and acquaintances are either writing or talking or vegetating. Dabney kindles to excitability every day over something said in the House, or something said by other journalists about something said in the House, and that's how he will go on spending this boon of life to the end--never travelling, never suffering, never being hungry or thirsty or wicked. What a way to live! And your novelists and dramatists too"--like so many of the world's reformers this young man has the most exasperating way of saying "you" and "your"--"your novelists and dramatists trafficking in the sham emotions of their puppets, how they are wasting this boon of life! And all their myriad audiences in the theatres, or readers reclining on sofas, how they are wasting it!--lulling themselves with the stories of fictitious mannikins, instead of doing something, almost no matter what. And this enemy of society who lives under our very roof, the cinema man, what an account there will be to settle with him one day! He's one of the worst lullers. "It infuriates me. Something has got to be done, and I'm going to do it. England's got to look herself in the face. She's been dodging the mirror for years, but she's got to do it. I'm out to see that she does."