“It was not,” he said, “so much the questionableness of the play; what shocked me most was the horrible levity of the audience, the laughter with which every indecent allusion was greeted.”

The conversation had fallen, and Mike said—­

“So you are going away?  Well, we shall all miss you very much.  But you don’t intend to bury yourself in the country; you’ll come up to town sometimes.”

“I feel I must not stay here; the place has grown unbearable.”  A look of horror passed over John’s face.  “Hall has the rooms opposite.  His life is a disgrace; he hurries through his writing, and rushes out to beat up the Strand, as he puts it, for shop-girls.  I could not live here any longer.”

Mike could not but laugh a little; and offended, John rose and continued the packing of his Indian gods.  Allusion was made to Byzantine art; and Mike told the story of Frank’s marriage; and John laughed prodigiously at the account he gave of the conversation overheard.  Regarding the quarrel John was undecided.  He found himself forced to admit that Mike’s conduct deserved rebuke; but at the same time, Frank’s sentimental views were wholly distasteful to him.  Then in reply to a question as to where he was going, Mike said he didn’t know.  John invited him to come and stay at Thornby Place.

“It is half-past three now.  Do you think you could get your things packed in time to catch the six o’clock?”

“I think so.  I can instruct Southwood; she will forward the rest of my things.”

“Then be off at once; I have a lot to do.  Hall is going to take my furniture off my hands.  I have made rather a good bargain with him.”

Nothing could suit Mike better.  He had never stayed in a country house; and now as he hurried down the Temple, remembrances of Mount Rorke Castle rose in his mind—­the parade of dresses on the summer lawns, and the picturesqueness of the shooting parties about the long, withering woods.

CHAPTER VII

For some minutes longer the men lay resting in the heather, their eyes drinking the colour and varied lights and lines of the vast horizon.  The downs rose like cliffs, and the dead level of the weald was freckled with brick towns; every hedgerow was visible as the markings on a chess-board; the distant lands were merged in blue vapour, and the windmill on its little hill seemed like a bit out of a young lady’s sketch-book.

“How charming it is here!—­how delightful!  How sorrow seems to vanish, or to hang far away in one’s life like a little cloud!  It is only in moments of contemplation like this, when our wretched individuality is lost in the benedictive influences of nature, that true happiness is found.  Ah! the wonderful philosophy of the East, the wisdom of the ancient races!  Christianity is but a vulgarization of Buddhism, an adaptation, an arrangement for family consumption.”