“And that, I venture to suggest, ma’am,” he respectably continued, “is why your worthy husband has been so much more fortunate in the world than myself. We are both respectable, if I may say so, patterns of respectability” (Crichton coloured with gratification at this compliment from the Master), “and yet our respectability has brought us very different fates. And why, if you please, ma’am? Because I have served the young, while he has served the old—for I believe, ma’am, the most noble the Earl of Loam is long past the meridian. Besides, ma’am, we Early Victorians had not your husband’s educational advantages. There were no Board schools for me. Not that I’m complaining, ma’am. We could still teach the young ’uns a thing or two about respectability.” And so with a proud humility (and an intuition that there was to be no more port) he took his leave, again shutting the door with the utmost delicacy. He was, in truth, well content. He had seen his boy. The sacred lamp of respectability was not out. But Mr. Crichton sat in a maze, still washing his hands with invisible soap. HENRY JAMES REPUDIATES “THE REPROBATE” He had dropped, a little wearily, the poor dear man, into a seat at the shady end of the terrace, whither he had wended or, it came over him with a sense of the blest “irony” of vulgar misinterpretation, almost zig-zagged his way after lunch. For he had permitted himself the merest sip of the ducal Yquem or Brane Cantenac, or whatever—he knew too well, oh, _didn’t_ he? after all these years of Scratchem house-parties, the dangerous convivialities one had better show for beautifully appreciating than freely partake of—but he had been unable, in his exposure as the author of established reputation, the celebrity of the hour, the “master,” as chattering Lady Jemima _would_ call him between the omelette and the chaudfroid, to “take cover” from the ducal dates. Well, the “All clear” was now sounded, but his head was still dizzy with the reverberating ’87’s and ’90’s and ’96’s and other such bombs of chronological precision that the host had dropped upon the guests as the butler filled their glasses. His subsequent consciousness was quite to cherish the view that dates which went thus distressingly to one’s head must somehow not be allowed to slip out of it again, but be turned into “copy” for readers who innocently look to their favourite romancers for connoisseurship in wines. What Lady Jemima had flung out at lunch was true, readers _are_ a “rum lot,” and, hang it all, who says art says sacrifice, readers were a necessary evil, the many-headed monster must be fed, and he’d be blest if he wouldn’t feed it with dates, and show himself for, indulgently, richly, chronologically, “rum.”