I shall probably lunch with him, so don't wait for me. And concerning the five hundred, you needn't be in my debt an hour longer than you like--I'll take a cheque for the money back from you this evening." "All right"--I said--"But perhaps the great oracle of the cliques will reject your proposals with scorn." "If he does, then is Utopia realized!"--replied Lucio, carefully drawing on his gloves as he spoke--"Where's a copy of your book? Ah--here's one--smelling newly of the press," and he slipped the volume into his overcoat pocket; "Allow me, before departure, to express the opinion that you are a singularly ungrateful fellow, Geoffrey! Here am I, perfectly devoted to your interests,--and despite my princedom actually prepared to 'pose' to McWhing as your 'acting manager' _pro tem_, and you haven't so much as a thank-you to throw at me!" He stood before me smiling, the personification of kindness and good humour. I laughed a little. "McWhing will never take _you_ for an acting manager or literary agent,"--I said--"You don't look it. If I seem churlish I'm sorry--but the fact is I am disgusted ..." "At what?" he inquired, still smiling. "Oh, at the humbug of everything,"--I answered impatiently; "The stupid farce of it all. Why shouldn't a book get noticed on its own merits without any appeal to cliquism and influential wire-pulling on the press?" "Exactly!" and he delicately flicked a grain of dust off his coat while speaking--"And why shouldn't a man get received in society on his own merits, without any money to recommend him or any influential friend to back him up?" I was silent. "The world is as it is made,"--he went on, regarding me fixedly--"It is moved by the lowest and pettiest motives,--it works for the most trivial, ridiculous and perishable aims. It is not a paradise. It is not a happy family of united and affectionate brethren. It is an over-populated colony of jabbering and quarrelsome monkeys, who fancy they are men. Philosophers in old days tried to teach it that the monkey-type should be exterminated for the growth and encouragement of a nobler race,--but they preached in vain--there never were enough real men alive to overcome the swarming majority of the beasts. God Himself, they say, came down from Heaven to try and set wrong things right, and to restore if possible His own defaced image to the general aspect of humanity,--and even He failed." "There is very little of God in this world"--I said bitterly; "There is much more Devil!" He smiled,--a musing, dreamy smile that transfigured his countenance and made him look like a fine Apollo absorbed in the thought of some new and glorious song.