Arthur Inglewood was staring with feelings that made him nearly fall off the roof, for indeed the Irishman’s face, always sinister, was now almost demoniacal.

“Christ confound it!” cried out Moon, suddenly clutching the empty claret bottle, “this is about the thinnest and filthiest wine I ever uncorked, and it’s the only drink I have really enjoyed for nine years.  I was never wild until just ten minutes ago.”  And he sent the bottle whizzing, a wheel of glass, far away beyond the garden into the road, where, in the profound evening silence, they could even hear it break and part upon the stones.

“Moon,” said Arthur Inglewood, rather huskily, “you mustn’t be so bitter about it.  Everyone has to take the world as he finds it; of course one often finds it a bit dull—­”

“That fellow doesn’t,” said Michael decisively; “I mean that fellow Smith.  I have a fancy there’s some method in his madness.  It looks as if he could turn into a sort of wonderland any minute by taking one step out of the plain road.  Who would have thought of that trapdoor?  Who would have thought that this cursed colonial claret could taste quite nice among the chimney-pots?  Perhaps that is the real key of fairyland.  Perhaps Nosey Gould’s beastly little Empire Cigarettes ought only to be smoked on stilts, or something of that sort.  Perhaps Mrs. Duke’s cold leg of mutton would seem quite appetizing at the top of a tree.  Perhaps even my damned, dirty, monotonous drizzle of Old Bill Whisky—­”

“Don’t be so rough on yourself,” said Inglewood, in serious distress.  “The dullness isn’t your fault or the whisky’s.  Fellows who don’t—­ fellows like me I mean—­have just the same feeling that it’s all rather flat and a failure.  But the world’s made like that; it’s all survival.  Some people are made to get on, like Warner; and some people are made to stick quiet, like me.  You can’t help your temperament.  I know you’re much cleverer than I am; but you can’t help having all the loose ways of a poor literary chap, and I can’t help having all the doubts and helplessness of a small scientific chap, any more than a fish can help floating or a fern can help curling up.  Humanity, as Warner said so well in that lecture, really consists of quite different tribes of animals all disguised as men.”

In the dim garden below the buzz of talk was suddenly broken by Miss Hunt’s musical instrument banging with the abruptness of artillery into a vulgar but spirited tune.

Rosamund’s voice came up rich and strong in the words of some fatuous, fashionable coon song:-

“Darkies sing a song on the old plantation,
Sing it as we sang it in days long since gone by.”

Inglewood’s brown eyes softened and saddened still more as he continued his monologue of resignation to such a rollicking and romantic tune.  But the blue eyes of Michael Moon brightened and hardened with a light that Inglewood did not understand.  Many centuries, and many villages and valleys, would have been happier if Inglewood or Inglewood’s countrymen had ever understood that light, or guessed at the first blink that it was the battle star of Ireland.