"Oh," retorted the artist, "it is on theoretical principles, purely. I adore that masculine ideal which man calls woman, but only finds in his brain. The highest on earth is reached only by the absolute elimination of the feminine. Ah! man is at his best in war," he went on, his attitude becoming less studied and more forcible, as he allowed his intellectual interest to overpower his vanity; "there he is all masculine; man without the limitations that the presence of woman imposes upon him. There woman is ignored, and even if she has been the cause of the war--and to be the cause of war is woman's noblest prerogative!--she is for the time being as completely forgotten as if she had never existed. She slips into oblivion as does the horn of grog which gives his courage." Fenton was in a mood when he fancied he was talking well, a conviction which was not always an accurate measure of the real worth of his remarks. He delighted in presenting half truths in forcible phraseology, relishing the taste of an epigram quite without reference to its verity. He amused himself and his friends with talk more or less brilliant, of which no one knew better than himself the fallacy, but whose cleverness atoned with him for all defects. The intellectual excitement of giving free rein to his fancy and his tongue was dangerously pleasant to Arthur, who often more than half convinced himself of the verity of his extravagant theories, and oftener still involved himself in their defense by yielding to the mere whim of phrasing them effectively. "You are on your high horse to-night, Fenton," cried Rangely, "you make no more of a metaphor than a racer of a hurdle." "Don't stop him," Ainsworth said. "Let him run the course out now he's on the track." "When man comes into his kingdom," Fenton broke out again, too fully aroused to mind the banter, yet with a sort of double consciousness enjoying the absurdity of the whole conversation, "when man comes into his kingdom, when we get to the perfection of the race, there will be no women. The ultimate man will be masculine--men, only men; gloriously and eternally masculine!" "But how will the race perpetuate itself?" asked Tom in as matter of fact a tone as he might have inquired the time of day. "Perpetuate itself!" blazed the other. "The race will not need to perpetuate itself. The world will be peopled with gods! When once women are gone the race will have become immortal!" A shout of mingled applause and derision greeted this outburst, amid which Fenton threw himself back in a lounging chair and lighted a fresh cigar. He was intoxicated with himself, and few draughts are more dangerous. "Take to the lecture platform, Fenton," jeered Ainsworth. "You'll make your mark in the world yet." "I wonder you stopped at immortality," remarked Fred Rangely. "You usually go on to dispose of the future state." "Impossible," retorted the artist, "for you never heard me say I believed in one."