It was late when Mr. Barker found Claudius scribbling equations on a sheet of the hotel letter-paper.  The Doctor looked up pleasantly at his friend.  He could almost fancy he had missed his society a little; but the sensation was too novel a one to be believed genuine.

“Did you find your friends?” he inquired.

“Yes, by some good luck.  It is apt to be the other people one finds, as a rule.”

“Cynicism is not appropriate to your character, Mr. Barker.”

“No.  I hate cynical men.  It is generally affectation, and it is always nonsense.  But I think the wrong people have a way of turning up at the wrong moment.”  After a pause, during which Mr. Barker lighted a cigar and extended his thin legs and trim little feet on a chair in front of him, he continued: 

“Professor, have you a very strong and rooted dislike to the society of women?”

Assailed by this point-blank question, the Doctor put his bit of paper inside his book, and drumming on the table with his pencil, considered a moment.  Mr. Barker puffed at his cigar with great regularity.

“No,” said Claudius at last, “certainly not.  To woman man owes his life, and to woman he ought to owe his happiness.  Without woman civilisation would be impossible, and society would fall to pieces.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Mr. Barker.

“I worship woman in the abstract and in the concrete.  I reverence her mission, and I honour the gifts of Heaven which fit her to fulfil it.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Barker.

“I think there is nothing made in creation that can be compared with woman, not even man.  I am enthusiastic, of course, you will say, but I believe that homage and devotion to woman is the first duty of man, after homage and devotion to the Supreme Being whom all different races unite in describing as God.”

“That will do, thank you,” said Mr. Barker, “I am quite satisfied of your adoration, and I will not ask her name.”

“She has no name, and she has all names,” continued Claudius seriously.  “She is an ideal.”

“Yes, my feeble intelligence grasps that she cannot be anything else.  But I did not want a confession of faith.  I only asked if you disliked ladies’ society, because I was going to propose to introduce you to some friends of mine here.”

“Oh!” said Claudius, and he leaned back in his chair and stared at the lamp.  Barker was silent.

The Doctor was puzzled.  He thought it would be very rude of him to refuse Mr. Barker’s offer.  On the other hand, in spite of his protestations of devotion to the sex, he knew that the exalted opinion he held of woman in general had gained upon him of late years, since he had associated less with them.  It was with him a beautiful theory, the outcome of a knightly nature thrown back on itself, but as yet not fixed or clearly defined by any intimate knowledge of woman’s character, still less by any profound personal experience of love.  Courtesy was uppermost as he answered.