“How can you speak of shame?” he said--“What shame is left in either man or woman nowadays? Naked to the very skin of foulness, they flaunt a nudity of vice in every public thoroughfare! Your sentiments, my grand Sergius, are those of an old world long passed away! You are a reformer, a lover of truth--a hater of shams--and in the days when the people loved truth,--and wanted justice,--and fought for both, you would have been great! But greatness is nowadays judged as ‘madness’--truth as ‘want of tact’--desire for justice is ‘clamour for notoriety.’ Shame? There is no shame in anything, Sergius, but honesty! That is a disgrace to the century; for an honest man is always poor, and poverty is the worst of crimes.” He threw up his arms with a wild gesture,--“The worst of crimes! Do I not know it!” Thord took him gently by the shoulder. “You talk, Zouche, as you always talk, at random, scarcely knowing, and certainly not half meaning what you say. There is no real reason in your rages against fate and fortune. Leave the accursed drink, and you may still win the prize you covet--Fame.” “Not I!” said Zouche scornfully,--“Fame in its original sense belonged also to the growing-time of the world--when, proud of youth and the glow of life, the full-fledged man judged himself immortal. Fame now is adjudged to the biped-machine who drives a motor-car best,--or to the fortunate soap-boiler who dines with a king! Poetry is understood to be the useful rhyme which announces the virtues of pills and boot-blacking! Mark you, Sergius!--my latest volume was ‘graciously accepted by the King’! Do you know what that means?” “No,” replied Thord, a trifle coldly; “And if it were not that I know your strange vagaries, I should say you wronged your election as one of us, to send any of your work to a crowned fool!” Zouche laughed discordantly. “You would? No, you would not, my Sergius, if you knew the spirit in which I sent it! A spirit as wild, as reckless, as ranting, as defiant as ever devil indulged in! The humility of my presentation letter to his Majesty was beautiful! The reply of the flunkey-secretary was equally beautiful in smug courtesy: ‘Sir, I am commanded by the King to thank you for the book of poems you have kindly sent for his acceptance!’ I say again, Thord, do you know what it means?” “No; I only wish that instead of talking here, you would let me see you safely home.”