Mrs Allmash.  How wonderfully clever and fortunate you are, dear!  What is her name?

Lady Fritterly.  Mrs Gloring.

Mrs Allmash.  Oh yes; everybody was talking about her at the Duchess’s last night.  I am dying to see her; but they say that she is rather a fool.

Lady Fritterly.  Pure spite and jealousy.  Yet that is the way these Christian women of society obey the precept of their religion, and love their neighbours as themselves.

[Lord Fondleton is announced, accompanied by a stranger.

Lord Fondleton.  How d’ye do, Lady Fritterly?  I am sure you will excuse my taking the liberty of introducing Mr Rollestone, a very old friend of mine, to you; he has only just returned to England, after an absence of so many years that he is quite a stranger in London.

[Lady Fritterly is “delighted.” The rest of the party arrive in rapid succession.

Mrs Allmash.  Dear Mr Germsell, I was just telling Lady Fritterly what an interesting conversation we were having last night when it was unfortunately interrupted.  I shall be so glad if you would explain more fully now what you were telling me.  I am sure everybody would be interested.

Lady Fritterly.  Oh do, Mr Germsell; it would be quite too nice of you.  And, Mr Drygull, will you ask the Khoja to—­

Mr Drygull.  My friend’s name is Ali Seyyid, Lady Fritterly.

Lady Fritterly.  Pray excuse my stupidity, Mr Allyside, and come and sit near me.  Lord Fondleton, find Mrs Gloring a chair.

Lord Fondleton [aside to Mrs Gloring].  Who’s our black friend?

Mrs Gloring.  I am sure I don’t know.  I think Lady Fritterly called him a codger.

Lord Fondleton.  Ah, he looks like it,—­and a rum one at that, as our American cousins say.

Mrs Gloring.  Hush!  Mr Germsell is going to begin.

Mr Germsell.  Mrs Allmash asked me last night whether my thoughts had been directed to the topic which is uppermost just now in so many minds in regard to the religion of the future, and I ventured to tell her that it would be found to be contained in the generalised expediency of the past.

Mr Fussle.  Pardon me, but the religion of the future must be the result of an evolutionary process, and I don’t see how generalisations of past expediency are to help the evolution of humanity.

Germsell.  They throw light upon it; and the study of the evolutionary process so far teaches us how we may evolve in the future.  For instance, you have only got to think of evolution as divided into moral, astronomic, geologic, biologic, psychologic, sociologic, aesthetic, and so forth, and you will find that there is always an evolution of the parts into which it divides itself, and that therefore there is but one evolution going on everywhere after the same manner.  The work of science has been not to extend our experience, for that is impossible, but to systematise it; and in that systematisation of it will be found the religion of which we are in search.