"Not at all," was the quick reply; "we are expected to use our common sense in the matter. A winter's dawn is distinctly unpleasant; have nothing to do with it. A true benefactor of mankind would help us to hibernate. Imagine how splendid it would be to sleep from the twenty-sixth day of December until the first day of April. Those are the months of the income tax--of no interest to you, Lady Evelyn, but of great importance to poor people who are unable to help the Government to throw hay into the sea from the shores of South Africa. Blot out the winter, by all means; but leave us the summer, and do not expect us to spend the best hours of it in bed." "Am I, then, personally guilty in the matter? Frankly, you will never convert me. I am hateful before ten o'clock, and if I go riding before that time, the very horses tremble. Consider what going to bed at ten o'clock would mean to us in the season?" "I have considered it often. We should be spared a large number of very indifferent plays; a great many falsehoods would not be told to our acquaintances; old gentlemen would not, under such circumstances, need to go to Carlsbad to be scrubbed. You would save vast quantities of good food; learn what the country is to those who really know it; and, perhaps, discover that strange personality, yourself. Why should we be so frightened of such an excellent companion? Men and women tell you that they do not like to be alone. Is not that to say that they desire to keep self at a distance. The fellow would be troublesome, ask questions, and that sort of thing. But let others always be shouting in our ears (and modern society has excellent lungs), then we keep the stranger out and are glad to be quit of him. Some achieve the same end by work. I am one of them. When my work gets hold of me I cannot answer a common question decently. Sometimes I wake up suddenly and say, 'My dear Gavin, how are you getting on and what have you been doing all this time?' I become solicitous for the fellow and want to peep into his private books. That is often at dawn, Lady Evelyn, just when the sun is shooting up over the horizon. Then a man may not be ashamed to meet himself. For the rest of the time he is often play-acting." A faint blush came to her cheeks and she turned away her head.