“No, I do not see,” returned Claudius.  “If they really loved each other—­”

“Get out!” interrupted Barker, merrily.  “If you mean to take the immutability of the human affections as a basis of argument, I have done.”

“There your cynicism comes in,” said the other, “and denies you the pleasure and profit of contemplating an ideal, and of following it up to its full development.”

“Is it cynical to see things as they are instead of as they might be in an imaginary world?”

“Provided you really see them as they are—­no,” said Claudius.  “But if you begin with an idea that things, as they are, are not very good, you will very soon be judging them by your own inherent standard of badness, and you will produce a bad ideal as I produce a good one, farther still from the truth, and extremely depressing to contemplate.”

“Why?” retorted Barker; “why should it be depressing to look at everything as it is, or to try to?  Why should my naturally gay disposition suffer on making the discovery that the millennium is not begun yet?  The world may be bad, but it is a merry little place while it lasts.”

“You are a hopeless case,” said Claudius, laughing; “if you had a conscience and some little feeling for humanity, you would feel uncomfortable in a bad world.”

“Exactly.  I am moderately comfortable because I know that I am just like everybody else.  I would rather, I am sure.”

“I am not sure that you are,” said Claudius thoughtfully.

“Oh! not as you imagine everybody else, certainly.  Medieval persons who have a hankering after tournaments and crawl about worshipping women.”

“I do not deny the softer impeachment,” answered the Doctor, “but I hardly think I crawl much.”

“No, but the people you imagine do—­the male population of this merry globe, as you represent it to the Countess.”

“I think Countess Margaret understands me very well.”

“Yes,” said Barker, “she understands you very well.”  He did not emphasise the remark, and his voice was high and monotonous; but the repetition was so forcible that Claudius looked at his companion rather curiously, and was silent.  Barker was examining the cork of his little pint bottle of champagne—­“just one square drink,” as he would have expressed it—­and his face was a blank.

“Don’t you think, Professor,” he said at last, “that with your views about the rights of women you might make some interesting studies in America?”

“Decidedly.”

“You might write a book.”

“I might,” said Claudius.

“You and the Countess might write a book together.”

“Are you joking?”

“No.  What I have heard you saying to each other this evening and the other day when we called would make a very interesting book, though I disagree with you both from beginning to end.  It would sell, though.”

“It seems to me you rather take things for granted when you infer that the Countess would be willing to undertake anything of the kind.”