"That," Harcutt remarked, "is because you are young, and a little quixotic. When you have lived as long as I have you will doubt everything. You will take nothing for granted unless you desire to live for ever amongst the ruins of your shattered enthusiasms. If you are wise, you will always assume that your swans are geese until you have proved them to be swans." "That is very cheap cynicism," Wolfenden remarked equably. "I am surprised at you, Harcutt. I thought that you were more in touch with the times. Don't you know that to-day nobody is cynical except schoolboys and dyspeptics? Pessimism went out with sack overcoats. Your remarks remind me of the morning odour of patchouli and stale smoke in a cheap Quartier Latin dancing-room. To be in the fashion of to-day, you must cultivate a gentle, almost arcadian enthusiasm, you must wear rose-coloured spectacles and pretend that you like them. Didn't you hear what Flaskett said last week? There is an epidemic of morality in the air. We are all going to be very good." "Some of us," Densham remarked, "are going to be very uncomfortable, then." "Great changes always bring small discomforts," Wolfenden rejoined. "But after all I didn't come here to talk nonsense. I came to ask you both something. I want to know whether you fellows are bent upon seeing this thing through?" Densham and Harcutt exchanged glances. There was a moment's silence. Densham became spokesman. "So far as finding out who they are and all about them," he said, "I shall not rest until I have done it." "And you, Harcutt?" Harcutt nodded gravely. "I am with Densham," he said. "At the same time I may as well tell you that I am quite as much, if not more, interested in the man than in the girl. The girl is beautiful, and of course I admire her, as every one must. But that is all. The man appeals to my journalistic instincts. There is copy in him. I am convinced that he is a personage. You may, in fact, regard me, both of you, as an ally rather than as a rival." "If you had your choice, then, of an hour's conversation with either of them----" Wolfenden began. "I should choose the man without a second's hesitation," Harcutt declared. "The girl is lovely enough, I admit. I do not wonder at you fellows--Densham, who is a worshipper of beauty; you, Wolfenden, who are an idler--being struck with her! But as regards myself it is different. The man appeals to my professional instincts in very much the same way as the girl appeals to the artistic sense in Densham. He is a conundrum which I have set myself to solve." Wolfenden rose to his feet. "Look here, you fellows," he said, "I have a proposition to make. We are all three in the same boat. Shall we pull together or separately?" Harcutt dropped his eyeglass and smiled quietly. "Quixotic as usual, Wolf, old chap," he said. "We can't, our interests are opposed; at least yours and Densham's are. You will scarcely want to help one another under the circumstances."