know.”  Miss Skeat listened to the disquisition on the rights of birth with rapt attention, and the yellow candle-light played pleasantly on her old corners, and her ancient heart fluttered sympathetically.  Margaret, on the other side, made Claudius talk about his youth, and took infinite pleasure in listening to his tales of the fresh Northern life he had led as a boy.  The Doctor had the faculty of speech and told his stories with a certain vigour that savoured of the sea.

“I hope you will both come and see me,” said the Countess, as the two men took their departure; but as she spoke she looked at Barker.

Half an hour later they sat in their sitting-room at the hotel, and Barker sipped a little champagne while Claudius smoked cigarettes, as usual.  As usual, also, they were talking.  It was natural that two individuals endowed with the faculty of expressing their thoughts, and holding views for the most part diametrically opposed, should have a good deal to say to each other.  The one knew a great deal, and the other had seen a great deal; both were given to looking at life rather seriously than the reverse.  Barker never deceived himself for a moment about the reality of things, and spent much of his time in the practical adaptation of means to ends he had in view; he was superficial in his knowledge, but profound in his actions.  Claudius was an intellectual seeker after an outward and visible expression of an inward and spiritual truth which he felt must exist, though he knew he might spend a lifetime in the preliminary steps towards its attainment.  Just now they were talking of marriage.

“It is detestable,” said Claudius, “to think how mercenary the marriage contract is, in all civilised and uncivilised countries.  It ought not to be so—­it is wrong from the very beginning.”

“Yes, it is wrong of course,” answered Barker, who was always ready to admit the existence and even the beauty of an ideal, though he never took the ideal into consideration for a moment in his doings.  “Of course it is wrong; but it cannot be helped.  It crops up everywhere, as the question of dollars and cents will in every kind of business; and I believe it is better to be done with it at first.  Now you have to pay a Frenchman cash down before he will marry your daughter.”

“I know,” said Claudius, “and I loathe the idea.”

“I respect your loathing, but there it is, and it has the great advantage that it is all over, and there is no more talk about it.  Now the trouble in our country is that people marry for love, and when they get through loving they have got to live, and then somebody must pay the bills.  Supposing the son of one rich father marries the daughter of another rich father; by the time they have got rid of the novelty of the thing the bills begin to come in, and they spend the remainder of their amiable lives in trying to shove the expense off on to each other.  With an old-fashioned marriage contract to tie them up, that would not happen, because the wife is bound to provide so many clothes, and the husband has to give her just so much to eat, and there is an end of it.  See?”