Mrs Gloring.  No; it seems to me more like tic-tic-tic.

Mrs Allmash.  How too tiresome!  I can’t hear anything.  I suppose it is on account of the rumble of the carriages.

Lord Fondleton [whispers to Mrs Gloring].  I hear something inside of me; do you know what?

Mrs Gloring.  No; what?

Lord Fondleton.  The beating of my own heart.  Can’t you guess for whom?

Mrs Gloring.  No.  Perhaps the Rishi makes it beat.

Lord Fondleton.  Dear Mrs Gloring, you are the Rishi for whom—­

Mrs Gloring.  Hush!

Lady Fritterly.  There, it is getting louder, like distant artillery, and yet so near.  Oh, Mr Drygull, what a wonderful man the Rishi must be!

Drygull.  Yes; he knew that at this hour to-day I should need an illustration of his power, and he is kindly furnishing us with one.  This is an experience which I think our friend over there [looking towards Mr Germsell] would find it difficult to classify.

Germsell.  Fussle, have the goodness to step here for a moment—­[points to a woman beating a carpet in the back-yard of an adjoining house].  That is the tom-tom in the Himalayas they are listening to.

Fussle.  Well, now, do you know, I don’t feel quite sure of that.  I was certainly conscious of a sort of internal hearing of something when you called me, which was not that; it was as though I had fiddlestrings in my head and somebody was beginning to strum upon them.

Germsell.  Fiddlestrings indeed—­say rather fiddlesticks.  I am surprised at a sensible man like yourself listening to such nonsense.

Fussle [testily].  It is much greater nonsense for you to tell me I don’t hear something I do hear, than for me to hear something you can’t hear.  You may be deaf, while my sense of hearing may be evolving.  Can you hear what Lord Fondleton is saying to Mrs Gloring at this moment?

Germsell.  No, and I don’t want to.

Fussle.  Ah, there it is.  You won’t hear anything you don’t want to.  Now I can, and he ought not to say it;—­look how she is blushing.  Oh, I forgot you are short-sighted.  Well, you see, I can hear further than you, and see further than you.  Why should you set a limit on the evolution of the senses, and say that no man in the future can ever hear or see further than men have in the past?  How dare you, sir, with your imperfect faculties and your perfunctory method of research, which can only cover an infinitesimal period in the existence of this planet, venture to limit the potentialities of those laws which have already converted us from ascidians into men, and which may as easily evolve in us the faculty of hearing tom-toms in the Himalayas while we are sitting here, as of that articulate speech or intelligent reasoning which, owing to their operation, we now possess?