"Didn't I tell you--?" said Brun, greatly excited--then pulled himself up--"No, it wasn't you. It was Arkwright. More than a year ago we were in a picture gallery looking at your Duchess's picture, and coming home we talked. I said then that something would come, that something _must_ come, and that then everything, _everything_ would crumple up. And behold!" cried Brun, his eyes flashing--"See, it crumples!" "That's a little previous of you," said Christopher. "Nothing crumpled yet. We're disturbed of course----" "It is most lucky," Brun said, "most lucky. Here we are, you and I, ordinary people enough, with the end of a Period with its death and the way it takes it, all for us to watch. _Most_ lucky...." "End of Victorian Age ... _Voila!_" and with a little dramatic gesture he waved his hand as though he were flinging the Age and its lumber away, out of the window. "You know, Christopher," he went on, "I've seen things coming over here for so long. All you people, you couldn't have gone on very much longer so remote from life. And now this--it will finish your Duchess, your Beaminsters, your queen in her bonnet, your Sundays and your religion and your Whigs and Tories, and all your hypocrisies--No names any more taken just because they've always been taken, but new names made by men who're doing things. Nothing taken for granted any more. "Your Beaminsters will vanish, and then you'll have your Denisons and Oaks and Ruddards on top. Then you'll see a time. You'll all be spinning like a top, dancing, dancing like dervishes. Then while you're busy dancing up the other people will quietly come--all the real people, the Individualists--Women will have their justice--no man will skunk behind his garden hedge because he doesn't want to be bothered. No more superstition, no more inefficiency----" "You're a wonderful fellow, Brun," said Christopher, getting up and flinging away the end of his cigarette. "You've always got any amount to say--but do you never think of people as people, not as theories or movements or developments----" "No, thank God, I don't. That's for the sentimentalists like you, Christopher. People are all the same, fools or knaves." "Well, I'm glad I don't think so," said Christopher. "Tell me," Brun put his little hand on the other's elbow, "your Beaminsters now, how are they?" "They're all right." "The Duchess? I hear she's not so well----" "Oh! nonsense--Well as she's been any time these last thirty years." "Yes? So--I'm glad. But the other Beaminsters? Ah! I must go quickly and call--To see them burst asunder, that will be most amusing----" Christopher laughed. "You won't see the Duke or Richard Beaminster burst," he said--"They're like you--no personal feeling." "And the girl?" "Lady Seddon?" "Yes. She'll stir things up. She's not a Beaminster, or only enough of one to make her hate the family. And she does hate them, _hein_?"