His first half-thought was a certainty now. Something that some one had said to him a week ago at a Savage Club dinner--one of those irresponsible but dangerous and damaging remarks which begin, "D'you know, I'm told that so and so--" flashed through his mind. "Are you in town for long, Mr. Lothian?" he asked. "You don't come to town often, do you?" "No, I don't," Lothian answered. "I hate London. A damnable place I always think." The other, so thorough a Londoner, always getting so much--in every way--out of his life in London, looked at the speaker curiously, not quite knowing how to take him. Lothian seemed to see it. He had made the remark with emphasis, with a superior note in his voice, but he corrected himself quickly. It was almost as though Toftrees' glance had made him uneasy. His face became rather ingratiating, and there was a propitiatory note in his voice when he spoke again. He drew his chair a little nearer to the other's. "I knew too much of London when I was a young man," he went on with an unnecessarily confidential and intimate manner. "When I came down from Oxford first, I was caught up into the 'new' movement. It all seemed very wonderful to me then. It did to all of us. We divorced art from morals, we lived extraordinary lives, we sipped honey from every flower. Most of the men of that period are dead. One or two are insane, others have gone quite under and are living dreadful larva-like lives in obscene hells of the body and soul, of which you can have no conception. But, thank God, I got out of it in time--just in time! If it hadn't been for my dear wife . . ." He paused. The sensitive lips smiled, with an almost painful tenderness, a quivering, momentary effect which seemed grotesquely out of place in a face which had become flushed and suddenly seemed much fatter. There was a horrible insincerity about that self-conscious smile--the more horrible because, at the moment, Toftrees saw that Lothian believed absolutely in his own emotion, was pleased with himself sub-consciously, too, and was perfectly certain that he was making a fine impression--pulling aside the curtain that hung before a beautiful and holy place! The smile lingered for a moment. The light in the curious eyes seemed turned inward complacently surveying a sanctuary. Then there was an abrupt change of manner. Lothian laughed. There was a snap in his laughter, which, Toftrees was sure, was meant to convey the shutting down of a lid. "I like you," Lothian was trying to say to him--the acquaintance of ten minutes!--"I can open my heart to you. You've had a peep at the Poet's Holy of Holies. But we're men of the world--you and I!--enough of this. We're in society. We're dining at the Amberleys'. Our confidences are over!" "So you see," the _actual_ voice said, "I don't like London. It's no place for a gentleman!"