“No need to repeat, I assure you,” said Mr. Cardan, shaking his head. “Did you think I ever supposed I could persuade you? You don’t imagine I’d waste my time trying to persuade a full-grown man with fixed opinions of the truth of something he doesn’t already believe? If you were twelve years old, even if you were twenty, I might try. But at your age—no, no.” “Then why do you argue, if you don’t want to persuade?” asked Mr. Falx. “For the sake of argument,” Mr. Cardan replied, “and because one must murder the time somehow. Come ingannar questi noiosi e lenti Giorni di vita cui si lungo tedio E fastidio insoffribile accompagna Or io t’insegnero. I could write a better handbook of the art than old Parini.” “I’m sorry,” said Mr. Falx, “but I don’t know Italian.” “Nor should I,” said Mr. Cardan, “if I had your unbounded resources for killing time. Unhappily, I was born without much zeal for the welfare of the working classes.” “Working classes....” Mr. Falx swooped down on the words. Passionately he began to talk. What was that text, thought Mr. Cardan, about the measure with which ye mete? How fearfully applicable it was! For the last ten minutes he’d been boring poor old Mr. Falx. And now Mr. Falx had turned round and was paying him back with his own measure—but, oh, Lord, pressed down and, heaven help us! running over. He looked down over the balustrade. On the lower terraces the couples were still parading up and down. He wondered what they were saying; he wished he were down there to listen. Boomingly, Mr. Falx played his prophetic part. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER III It was a pity that Mr. Cardan could not hear what his hostess was saying. He would have been delighted; she was talking about herself. It was a subject on which he specially loved to hear her. There were few people, he used to say, whose Authorised Version of themselves differed so strikingly from that Revised, formed of them by others. It was not often, however, that she gave him a chance to compare them. With Mr. Cardan she was always a little shy; he had known her so long. “Sometimes,” Mrs. Aldwinkle was saying, as she walked with Chelifer on the second of the three terraces, “sometimes I wish I were less sensitive. I feel everything so acutely—every slightest thing. It’s like being ... like being ...” she fumbled in the air with groping fingers, feeling for the right word, “like being flayed,” she concluded triumphantly, and looked at her companion. Chelifer nodded sympathetically. “I’m so fearfully aware,” Mrs. Aldwinkle went on, “of other people’s thoughts and feelings. They don’t have to speak to make me know what they’ve got in their minds. I know it, I _feel_ it just by seeing them.”