"Yes, that is so," he said. "I don't pretend to wish to seek out the secrets of the stars. But I know what I like. And I don't like anything that leads into the heart of things. I don't like interiors and symbolism. There is quite enough symbol for me on the surface. What I mean is that the eyebrow itself, the curve of the mouth, will tell you quite as much as one has any use for about the brain that makes the eyebrow frown or the mouth smile. Beauty may be skin deep only, but it is quite deep enough. Skin deep! Why, it is as deep as the sea!" Tom Merivale was silent a little. "Do you know, you are an interesting survival of the Pagan spirit?" he said at length. Evelyn laughed. "Erect me an altar then at once, and crown me with roses," he remarked. "But what have I said just now that makes you think that?" "Nothing particular this moment," he answered, "though your remarking that beauty was enough for you is thoroughly Greek in its way. No; what struck me was that never have I seen in you the smallest rudiment or embryo of a conscience or of any moral sense." Evelyn looked up with real interest at this criticism. "Oh, that is perfectly true," he said. "Certainly I never have remorse; it must be awful, a sort of moral toothache. All the same, I don't steal or lie, you know." "Merely because lying and stealing are very inartistic performances," said Tom. "But no idea of morality stands in your way." Evelyn got up, looking out over the heat-hazed green of the woods below them with his brilliant glance. "Is that very shocking?" he asked, with perfectly unassumed _naïvetê_. "I suppose it is. Personally, I am never shocked at anything. But it seems to me very dangerous. You ought to wear a semaphore with a red lamp burning at the end of it." Evelyn half shut his eyes and put his head on one side. "I don't think that would compose well," he said. "That is most consistently spoken," said Tom. "But really, if you are ever in earnest about anything beside your art, you would be a public danger." Evelyn turned round on this. "You call me a Pagan," he said. "Well, what are you, pray, with your communings with nature and conjuring tricks with nightingales? You belong to quite as early a form of man." "I know. I am primeval. At least I hope to be before I die." "What's the object?" "In order to see Pan. I am getting on. Come down to the New Forest sometime, and you shall see very odd things, I promise you. Really, Evelyn, I wish you would come. It would do you no end of good." He got up, and taking the arm of the other man, walked with him down the terrace. "You are brilliant, I grant you," he said; "but you are like a mirror, only reflecting things. What you want is to be lit from within. Who is it who talks of the royalty of inward happiness? That is such a true phrase. All happiness from without is not happiness at all; it is only pleasure. And pleasure is always imperfect. It flickers and goes out, it has scratching nails----"