With the strange lust for torture-baths of pain; Sick with the thirst of poison drunk in vain, And bleeding with the clammy blood of tears. The new note thus successfully struck in literature was applauded with a vehemence that concealed some jealousy on the part of the other poets present. Only Molly Finucane, who was beginning to feel herself left out in the cold, asked the author impertinently what his work meant. “Nothing!” was the rapt reply. “All Art is quite meaningless.” The Duke of Trent turned to Mendes. “And is that absurd and disgusting rubbish the sort of thing which passes for poetry to-day?” “Not to-day, perhaps, but it will pass for it to-morrow. If Egerton Vane goes on long enough, I have no doubt he will found a school. But I have noticed that most young fellows who begin like that end by going into a monastery.” The Duke began to see a new usefulness in the institutions which he had been brought up to regard with aversion. The Brazilian, who knew the weak spot in most of his fellow-men, maliciously threw an apple of discord among the company by asking Egerton Vane across the table what he thought of the poems of Rowley Drummer. The quarrel which instantly arose and raged over the merits of this distinguished writer showed that envy of a rival’s renown may be a stronger passion than hatred of the middle classes. The chief apologist for the poet was a man who had recently achieved a scandalous success with a novel in which he dealt faithfully with the vices of all his most intimate friends. The terror inspired by this performance had made him for the moment the most courted man in London society, and persons like the brothers Vane followed him about everywhere in the hope of finding themselves pilloried to fame in Basil Dyke’s next libel. Dyke, who found his antipathy to the _bourgeoisie_ sensibly diminished by every cheque which reached him from his publisher, and who was already meditating desertion from the decadent ranks in favour of marriage with an heiress, put forward a claim on behalf of his client which it did not seem easy to refute. “He has made vice popular in the person of the British soldier,” he urged. “He has stamped with brazen hoofs upon the Gordons and the Havelocks and the prayer-meeting heroes of the Victorian Age, and has called upon the drudging taxpayer to bow down and worship a swearing, drinking blackguard. His patriotism is nauseous in itself, I grant, but then he has made it patriotic to break the Ten Commandments. He has identified Imperialism with immorality.” “And therefore, I suppose, you would say with Art?” retorted Egerton Vane, with ill-concealed annoyance. “All Art is immoral, but it does not follow that all immorality is artistic.”