What the text-books of a civic conscience were to be I did not enquire at this stage. If O’Rane aspired to make each man love his neighbour as himself, that was an aspiration towards which the Christian churches, usually with relatively greater wealth, often with the power of the sword and always with a grip on the fears and hopes of the faithful, had been working for nearly two thousand years. “The late war,” I propounded, “was not a good advertisement for Christian teaching.” “Because Christianity has never been brought to men’s doors and into their lives. ‘_What ragamuffin-saint_ _Believes God watches him continually,_ _As he believes in fire that it will burn,_ _Or rain that it will drench him?_’ I often wonder what would have happened to Christianity if it had come into the world with our modern means of communication.” We were still arguing when the rest of the party returned; and, until the brief winter twilight faded, we sat and spent Stornaway’s money for him. To this day I can see the half-circle of light dresses and the fire-fly movements of the men’s cigarettes; I can see faces white with avarice and eyes dark with excitement. “Over a million a year . . .,” Barbara gasped. “I told you we were going to be the big new noise in London,” said Sonia complacently. “George, of course, thinks he’s very superior.” . . . “I only think it’s a tremendous responsibility,” I defended myself. “If the job’s too big, we can turn it down,” said O’Rane. “The others thought that, too,” I warned him. It was a strange discussion, which ultimately became a monologue of foreboding. As all the world knows, Aylmer Lancing made his first fortune by chance and then found that he could not help adding to it; after buying the site of a burnt city, he had to build a city on the site; he constructed railroads to feed his city and manufactured agricultural machinery to pay for the food. Daily, until his breakdown, he grew richer; and, in the long years of his dying, he was to find that, while the hospitals, the universities, the museums and galleries could live on his bounty for a year, after that he must invent new outlets. “If your income’s too big, you can always reduce your capital,” Sam Dainton contributed. “I’ve been doing it for years.” “With a capital of five-and-twenty million?,” I asked. “It’s not a simple question of dropping bags of gold into the sea.” Early in his career, as I told them, Aylmer Lancing had tried to sell the New-Mexico-Montana Railroad when it was threatened by the South-Western Trunk. As he unloaded, the price fell; and, as the price fell, others unloaded too. A panic set in at one moment, to be ended the next by a rumour that Lancing was selling a bear. Up went the price; and Aylmer sold his last share on a soaring market, to find himself the richer by several million dollars.