“He is teaching Botticelli in his three manners,” said Lady Ascott, “and Cyril is thinking of going over to Rome.”

“Asher, let us get away from this culture,” Harding whispered.

“Yes, let’s get away from it; I want to show you a table, the one on which Evelyn used to write her letters.  We bought it together at the Salle Druot.”

“Yes, Asher, yes; but would you mind coming this way, for I see Ringwood.  He goes by in his drooping mantle, looking more like an umbrella than usual.  Lady Ascott has engaged him for the season, and he goes out with her to talk literature—­plush stockings, cockade.  Literature in livery!  Ringwood introducing Art!”

Owen laughed, and begged Harding to send his joke to the comic papers.

“An excellent subject for a cartoon.”

“He has stopped again.  Now I’m sure he’s talking of Sophocles.  He walks on....  I’m mistaken; he is talking about Moliere.”

“An excellent idea of yours—­’Literature in livery!’”

“His prose is always so finely spoken, so pompous, that I cannot help smiling.  You know what I mean.”

“I’ve told you it ought to be sent to the papers.  I wish he would leave that writing-table; and Lady Ascott might at least ask him to brush his coat.”

“It seems to me so strange that she should find pleasure in such company.”

“Men who will not cut their hair.  How is it?”

“I suppose attention to externals checks or limits the current of feeling... or they think so.”

“I am feeling enough, God knows, but my suffering does not prevent me from selecting my waistcoat and tying my tie.”

Harding’s eyes implied acquiescence in the folding of the scarf (it certainly was admirably done) and glanced along the sleeves of the coat—­a rough material chosen in a moment of sudden inspiration; and they did not miss the embroidered waistcoat, nor the daring brown trousers (in admirable keeping withal), turned up at the ends, of course, otherwise Owen would not have felt dressed; and, still a little conscious of the assistance his valet had been to him, he walked with a long, swinging stride which he thought suited him, stopping now and again to criticise a friend or a picture.

“There’s Merrington.  How absurdly he dresses!  One would think he was an actor; yet no man rides better to hounds.  Lady Southwick!  I must have a word with her.”

Before leaving Harding he mentioned that she attributed her lapses from virtue, not to passionate temperament, but to charitable impulses.  “She wouldn’t kiss—­” and Owen whispered the man’s name, “until he promised to give two thousand pounds to a Home for Girl Mothers.”

“Now, my dear Lady Southwick, I’m so delighted to see you here.  But how very sad!  The greatest singer of our time.”

“She was exceedingly good in two or three parts.”

A dispute arose, in which Owen lost his temper; but, recovering it suddenly, he went down the room with Lady Southwick to show her a Wedgewood dessert service which he had bought some years ago for Evelyn, pressing it upon her, urging that he would like her to have it.