"You are horribly unjust, Marie," said Lady Devereux in her sleepy, drawling voice. "We never belabour you. You are a privileged person; you go flying over hedges and ditches, while if I, for instance, as much as look over a hedge, I am supposed to be there for no good purpose. Is it the consciousness of innocence that gives you such license! One can acquire almost anything by practice. I think I shall set about that." Marie laughed. "I would, dear. Be innocent for an hour a day, to begin with, and increase it by degrees." "Ah, it's not innocence, but the consciousness of it, I want," said Blanche. "It is a different matter." "But it leads to absolutely nothing," said Arthur Naseby, in a discontented voice, "except, perhaps, promotion in the Church; but I have given up all real thought of that." "I thought the real way to get on in the Church now was to preach heretical doctrine," remarked Lady Devereux. "Our parson at Rye always casts doubt on things like Jonah and the whale, or tries to explain them by supposing it was not a whale, but an extinct animal with an enormous gullet, which seems to me just as remarkable. They tell me he is certain to be made a Bishop. My grandfather was a Bishop." "And mine was a draper," said Arthur Naseby. "I am thankful every day that he was such a successful one. Really, nothing matters nowadays except money. That is so convenient for the people who have some. Here is a most convenient person, for instance, just coming." Jim Spencer entered the tent with the air of looking for somebody. He also had the air of having found somebody when he saw Marie, and sat down in a low chair by her. "I have been playing croquet," he said; "but I shall never play again." "What happened?" "Nothing happened. I remained in sublime inactivity, except when other people used me for their own base ends. I never felt so useful in my life." "But that, again, is no use," said Arthur--"like the consciousness of innocence which Lady Devereux means to cultivate. Being simply an opportunity for other people seems to me the very type of a wasted life. I am continually being an opportunity for other people, and the opportunity I give them is to make unkind remarks about me; they constantly take advantage of it." "What do they say?" asked Marie. "They say I am idle, and therefore probably vicious. Now, nothing was ever less proved than that; it is a perfect fallacy, entirely due to that pessimistic person who said that Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do. That I am idle is, of course, quite true. For thirty years I have been very busy doing nothing whatever, and every day I live I find more nothing to do, if you understand." "Then, you allow the world doesn't libel you?" said Lady Devereux. "Certainly it does. It is that to which I so strongly object. People go about saying all sorts of things about me which are perfectly true. The greater the truth, the greater the libel." Marie got up from her chair.