The club was always pretty full at this time of the year. Wives and families were yet out of town, and the men came here to dine. Gilderman went early and secured a table by the open window, and sat there reading while he waited for his friend to come. The breeze came in at the open windows every now and then, swaying and bellying the gaudy awning outside. The stony street below looked hot and empty in the sloping light of the sinking sun. Every now and then Gilderman looked around from his paper--the room was beginning to fill. There was a distinct air of informality about everything. Many of the men wore tweed suits. At last, Stirling West sauntered into the room and dropped into his place. "How d'e do, old man?" said he. "Beastly hot, isn't it? How did you leave the madam?" "Not very well--her mother's with her." "So I heard. By-the-way, I see his reverence is at the rectory." "Yes; he came down last night in the _Nautilus_. Have a cocktail?" * * * * * The dinner was over and they were sitting in the café. Gilderman had been talking to his friend concerning his religious views. He had been led into that current of talk from discussing the execution of John the Baptist. "By Jove! old man," said Stirling West, "I wish I had your enthusiasm--I do, indeed. I believe you really believe in all that sort of stuff you're talking to me about." The air about them was blue with tobacco smoke. Their coffee-cups at their elbows were empty, except for a black remainder at the bottom; the saucers half full of the scattered cigar-ashes that had been tilted into them. Gilderman recognized that his talk was out of place, but he still continued. "Why do you call it stuff, Stirling? It's only stuff to you because you don't believe in it. The future life in another world is as real to me as--as going out of this café into the smoking-room yonder. What is life without such a belief as that? If you regard this life as all that there is for a man to live, then the world is a pit of misery worse than hell, and God is a jesting devil juggling with the misery and the pangs of mankind whom He created for His own amusement. Just look at it, Stirling, in the light of reason. Here we are with more than we want, trying to tickle our stomachs into an appetite by all this made-up stuff we've been eating. Go only just around the corner yonder and you'll find men and women living like maggots." "Oh yes; I know all about that sort of socialistic rot," put in Stirling West. "But how the deuce am I to help it, old man? I didn't put 'em there, and I can't go nosing around in their beastly tenements. What's the use of thinking and worrying about it, anyhow? What's the use of stirring up all that sort of a row about a thing a man can't help?"