Mrs. Delarayne's dining-room was filling rapidly. A buzz of conversation, accompanied by the shuffling of the latest arrivals' feet, began to pervade the large room, and necks were craned in tense expectation of celebrities. The philocanine Palmer was entrusted with the care of the legion of lap dogs out in the garden,--for the religious meeting could not admit even the most docile pet animal; and the sound of their spiteful yappings could be heard through the open windows at the back of the room. "You know, my dear," said Lady Muriel Bellington, who had brought her Mexican hairless, "of course he is very, very naughty. And it's very tiresome. But they are so minute, one couldn't beat them. It would be really too too!" Lady fflote, already purple with the heat, went almost black at the suggestion of beating the Mexican hairless. "Beat them!" she ejaculated. "Oh that would be very wrong. Oh no, you couldn't bully them. Better far let them tyrannise over you. I should never forgive myself." In another part of the room Sir Lionel Borridge was leaning across Mrs. Gerald Tribe, the delicate and emaciated wife of the Incandescent Gerald Tribe, to address a word to Miss Mallowcoid. "I think it possible, you know," he said very gravely, and looking the image of the most unconquerable woe, "that I may be able to give our minister certain mathematical facts, which I feel convinced are all in support of the doctrine of the Inner Light. I was working at them with my daughter last night,--the results are simply astounding--astounding, that's the only word." Miss Mallowcoid ejaculated, "Really! Really!" in a hushed, awed voice, and then quickly proceeded to communicate the thrilling intelligence to her right hand neighbour, who marvelled as reverently and as inaudibly as she had done. Sir Joseph, feeling a little bewildered, was asking Guy Tyrrell a string of questions which this young man was quite unqualified to answer, and both looked and felt extremely uncomfortable. Lord Henry, who was seated in the second row from the front, between Denis Malster and St. Maur, glanced round at the crowd behind him, and frowned darkly. "I think, you know, Lord Henry," said Denis Malster, noticing the young nobleman's expression of angry scorn, "you do not allow sufficiently for the fact that all of us have a subconscious inkling of the supernatural behind phenomena, and these attempts on the part of the followers of the Inner Light, of the Theosophists, or the Spiritualists, to realise the nature of this supernatural basis to the material and visible world, are all proofs of this subconscious inkling."