Harding, who was something of an historian, was able to illustrate this prophecy by reference to antiquity.  When the life of the senses and understanding reached its height, as it did in the last stages of the Roman Empire, a reaction came.  St. Francis of Assisi was succeeded by Alexander VI.; Luther soon followed after.  “And in twenty years hence we shall all become moral again.  Good heavens! the first sign of it has appeared—­Evelyn.”

Piccadilly flowed past, the stream of the season, men typical of England in their age as in their youth, typical of their castles, their swards, and lofty woods, of their sports and traditions, hunting, shooting, racing, polo playing; the women, too, typical of English houses and English parks, but not so typical; only recognisable by a certain reflected light; an Englishman makes woman according to his own image and likeness, taking clay often from America.  The narrow pavements of Bond Street were thronged, women getting out of their carriages, intent on their shopping, bowing to the men as they ran into the shops, making amends for the sombre black of the men’s coats by a delirium of feathers, skirts, and pink ankles.  And nodding to their friends, bowing to the ladies in the carriages, Harding and Owen edged their way through the crowd.

“The street at this hour is like a ballroom, isn’t it?” Owen said.  “I want to get some cigars.”  And they turned into a celebrated store, where half a dozen assistants were busily engaged in tying up parcels of five hundred or a thousand cigars, or displaying neatly-made paper boxes containing a hundred cigarettes.

“When will men give up smoking pipes, I should like to know?”

“I thought you were a pipe smoker?”

“So I was, but I can t bear the smell any longer.”

“Yet you smoke cigars?”

“Cigars are different.”

“How was it the change came?”

“I don’t know.”  Owen ordered a thousand cigars to be sent to Berkeley Square.

It was late for tea, and still too early for dinner.

“I am sorry to ask you to dine at such an early hour, but I daresay we shan’t have dinner till half-past seven.”

But Harding remembered his tailor:  some trousers.  And he led Owen towards Hanover Square, wondering if Owen would approve of his choice?

“It was like you to choose that grey.”

Now what was there to find fault with in the grey he had chosen?  They turned over the tailor’s pattern sheet.  Daring, in the art of dressing, is the prescriptive right of the professional just as it is in writing.  Owen was a professional dresser, whereas he, Harding, was but an amateur; and that was why he had chosen a timid, insignificant grey.  At once Owen discovered a much more effective cloth; and he chose a coat for Harding, who wanted one—­the same rough material which Harding had often admired on Owen’s shoulders.  But would such a dashing coat suit him as well as it did its originator, and dare he wear the fancy waistcoats Owen was pressing upon him?