“You see, things last such a little while, at least with the quick clubs. Why, the Thursday Club did the ‘Origin of Species’ and ‘First Principles’ in one afternoon. We call ourselves very deliberate at the Phidias; that is to say, we never have more than one topic for a meeting; but we shall do Schopenhauer’s works to-morrow morning after our annual business meeting.” Something in my look must have excited her suspicion, for she went on: “But I absolutely forbid your commiseration. Except for the strain of the competition, it all is very nice, I assure you. We have beautiful times.” “Of course you do,” I hastened to say. “Even a man can see that. Do you suppose that a man who had done Sienkiewicz and d’Annunzio and Pestalozzi this afternoon, and was going to do Pythagoras, prison reform, the Brahmanas, the Zend-Avesta and bimetallism to-morrow morning, could look as well as you do?” “I suppose,” she said, looking at me with her laughing, unperplexed eyes, “that we can do these things because we can do more with our subjective minds than you can.” “So you have been at the Subjective Minds too?” “One can’t get along at all nowadays without psychology. How should we ever have got back to ghost stories again without it? We had a delightful ghost afternoon at the Artemis. Then it all seems to come in well with the astral body business. Isn’t it a pity that we can’t be in several places at the same time?” “You wouldn’t ask that the tea-drinking part of us should be in more than one place at a time?” “Not necessarily. The tea-drinking part of us will look out for itself. Just now you had a far-away look. The other part of you was somewhere else—perhaps at _your_ club.” “No, no! I never was more completely present in my life.” [Illustration]