“How is your bibliomaniac?” said the soldier, as the two were following on after a drive. “Fairly frigid,” came the response. “Has his magnificence favored you with a letter of late?” “Not for ten days. You see, he is so much in demand as a genius.” “Geniuses are dangerous folk—tar-barrels, dynamite. They need damping.” They passed about the hem of a larch-wood where a thousand emerald points were shimmering in the sun. The gorse was ablaze on either side of the track. Down in the valley beneath them a lake flickered under the heavens, and they could catch the faint roar of the water as it foamed over the weir. “I suppose your friends know all about it?” said the major, pulling the peak of his cap down to shade his eyes in the sun. Ophelia glanced at his clean-shaven, jockey-like profile with critical approval. “Not much.” “Oh, but they ought to.” Two small boys trespassed on the line of fire. “Fore! you brats.” The soldier’s voice rang clear and clarion-like. It seemed to come from his chest with a brisk and healthful forcefulness, a strenuous virility that was unproblematic and easeful. “My dear girl, you are much too amiable,” he said, as they waded through a lagoon of heather. “Am I?” “You women are so patient; you will stand hell and damnation for the man you are fond of.” Ophelia smiled. “And you think I am still fond of him?” she said. “Don’t ask me to be a prophet.” “I am not a Mary or a Prudence.” “Not so puritanically fatuous.” “Hardly.” “Matters often sift themselves,” he said; “gentlemen of that class usually unbuckle the strap with their own fingers sooner or later. All the better for society, you know. Indiscretions brought to light, judicial interference, a decree nisi, etc. Oh yes, these things can be managed.” XXIII MRS. MINCE was in possession of her husband’s study, a melancholy room whose single window looked forth upon a red-brick wall and a corner of Mr. Mince’s vegetable garden. The room was carpeted with red drugget and curtained with dingy green plush. A forcible aroma of stale tobacco-smoke pervaded the air. Ranged along one wall were a number of dilapidated leather chairs like needy pensioners, the seats of the uninitiated who came on certain occasions to receive wisdom from Mr. Mince’s lips. A deal bookcase stood with warped shelves beneath a ponderous infliction of theological literature. The very books appeared dreary monuments of a dogmatism that had outlived its age. As for the room, it seemed to smell of Calvin and to echo the barbaric incongruities of the Athanasian Creed. It suggested a geological museum in its atmosphere, save that geology stands in peril of being dubbed heretical, and Mr. Mince’s sacerdotal fossils were orthodox to the last letter.