The largest and finest charitable institution!  The ineffable William and Mary had merely turned it into a charitable institution because they did not know what else to do with it.  The mighty halls which ought to have resounded to the laughter of the mistresses of Charles II were diverted to the inevitable squalor of almsgiving.  The mutilated victims of the egotism and the fatuity of kings were imprisoned there together under the rules and regulations of charity, the cruellest of all rules and regulations.  And all was done meanly—­that is, all that interested George.  Christopher Wren, who was building St. Paul’s and fighting libels and slanders at a salary of two hundred a year, came down to Greenwich and for years worked immortally for nothing amid material difficulties that never ceased to multiply; and he too was beaten by the huge monster.  Then Vanbrugh arrived and blithely finished in corrupt brick and flaming manifestations of decadence that which the pure and monumental genius of Inigo Jones had first conceived.  The north frontages were marvels of beauty; the final erections to the south amounted to an outrage upon Jones and Wren.  Still, the affair was the largest and finest charitable institution on earth!  What a country, thought George, hugging injustice!  So it had treated Jones and Wren and many another.  So it had treated Enwright.  And so it would treat, was already treating, him, George.  He did not care.  As the steamer approached Greenwich, and the details of the aborted palace grew clearer, and he could distinguish between the genius of Jones and the genius of Wren, he felt grimly and victoriously sure that both Jones and Wren had had the best of the struggle against indifference and philistinism—­as he too would have the best of the struggle, though he should die obscure and in penury.  He was miserable and resentful, and yet he was triumphant.  The steamer stopped at the town-pier.

“Are we there?” said Marguerite.  “Already?”

“Yes,” said he.  “And I think we may as well go back by the same steamer.”

She concurred.  However, an official insisted on them disembarking, even if they meant to re-embark at once.  They, went ashore.  The facade of the palace-hospital stretched majestically to the left of them, in sharp perspective, a sensational spectacle.

“It’s very large,” Marguerite commented.  Her voice was nervous.

“Yes, it’s rather more than large,” he said dryly.

He would not share his thoughts with her.  He knew that she had some inklings of taste, but in that moment he preferred to pretend that her artistic perception was on a level with that of William and Mary.  They boarded the steamer again, and took their old places; and the menacing problem of their predicament was still between them.

“We can have some tea downstairs if you like,” he said, after the steamer had turned round and started upstream.

She answered in tones imperfectly controlled: