"Yes, most of us are stunted copies of our real selves," he said. "Imitations of what we might be. And what might one not be?" The talk had got for him, at any rate, suddenly serious, and he looked up at Lady Ellington with a sparkling eye. "Explain," she said. "Well, it seems to me one cripples oneself in so many ways. One allows oneself to be nervous, and to be angry, and to be bound by conventions that are useless and cramping." "Tall hats, frock-coats?" asked she. "No, certainly not, because they, at any rate, are perfectly harmless. But, to take an example of what I mean, it seems to me a ridiculous convention that we should all consider ourselves obliged to know what is going on in the world. It does not really do one any good to know that there is war between China and Japan. What does do us good is not to be ill-tempered, and never to be sad. Sadness and pessimism are the worst forms of mental disease I know. And the state will not put sad and pessimistic people in asylums, or isolate them at any rate so that their disease should not spread. Such diseases are so frightfully catching, and they are more fatal than fevers. People die of them, soul and body!" Lady Ellington felt that Mrs. Home was collecting her eye, and rose. "What a fascinating theory," she said. "Just what I have always thought. Ah, I have caught my dress under my chair. You should have castors, Mr. Home, on your dining-room chairs." * * * * * Evelyn moved up next to Tom Merivale after the others had left them. "Dear old Hermit!" he said. "Now, you've got to give an account of yourself. Neither Phil nor I have seen you for a year. What have you been doing?" Tom let the port pass him. "I suppose you would call it nothing," said he. "Ah, but in real life people don't go and live in the New Forest and do nothing. What have you written in the last year?" "Not one line. Seriously, I have been doing nothing except a little gardening and carpentering; just manual labour to keep one sane."' "Well, it looks as if it suited you. You look well enough, and what is so odd, you look so much younger." Tom laughed again. "Ah, that strikes you, does it?" he said. "I suppose it could not have been otherwise, though that wasn't my object in going to live there." "Well, tell us, then!" said Evelyn, rather impatiently. He had begun to smoke, and smoked in a most characteristic manner; that is to say, that in little more than a minute his cigarette was consumed down one side, and was a peninsula of charred paper down the other, while clouds of smoke ascended from it. Perceiving this, he instantly lit another one. But Philip rose. "Tell us afterwards, Tom," he said. "Lady Ellington likes to play bridge, I know, as soon as dinner is over." Evelyn rose also. "Ah, she is like me," he said. "She wants to do things not soon, but immediately, Philip, how awfully pretty Miss Ellington is. Why wasn't I told? I should like to paint her."