“Tell me about your amateur journalism, Mr. Orden?” she begged.  “I have an idea that it ought to be interesting.”

“Deadly dull, I can assure you.”

“You write about politics?  Or perhaps you are an art critic?  I ought to be on my best behaviour, in case.”

“I know little about art,” he assured her.  “My chief interest in life—­outside my profession, of course—­lies in sociology.”

His little confession had been impulsive.  She raised her eyebrows.

“You are in earnest, I believe!” she exclaimed.  “Have I really found an Englishman who is in earnest?”

“I plead guilty.  It is incorrect philosophy but a distinct stimulus to life.”

“What a pity,” she sighed, “that you are so handicapped by birth!  Sociology cannot mean anything very serious for you.  Your perspective is naturally distorted.”

“What about yourself?” he asked pertinently.

“The vanity of us women!” she murmured.  “I have grown to look upon myself as being an exception.  I forget that there might be others.  You might even be one of our prophets—­a Paul Fiske in disguise.”

His eyes narrowed a little as he looked at her closely.  From across the table, the Bishop broke off an interesting discussion on the subject of his addresses to the working classes, and the Earl set down his wineglass with an impatient gesture.

“Does no one really know,” Mr. Stenson asked, “who Paul Fiske is?”

“No one, sir,” Mr. Hannaway Wells replied.  “I thought it wise, a short time ago, to set on foot the most searching enquiries, but they were absolutely fruitless.”

The Bishop coughed.

“I must plead guilty,” he confessed, “to having visited the offices of The Monthly Review with the same object.  I left a note for him there, in charge of the editor, inviting him to a conference at my house.  I received no reply.  His anonymity seems to be impregnable.”

“Whoever he may be,” the Earl declared, “he ought to be muzzled.  He is a traitor to his country.”

“I cannot agree with you, Lord Maltenby,” the Bishop said firmly.  “The very danger of the man’s doctrines lies in their clarity of thought, their extraordinary proximity to the fundamental truths of life.”

“The man is, at any rate,” Doctor Lennard interposed, “the most brilliant anonymous writer since the days of Swift and the letters of Junius.”

Mr. Stenson for a moment hesitated.  He seemed uncertain whether or no to join in the conversation.  Finally, impulse swayed him.

“Let us all be thankful,” he said, “that Paul Fiske is content with the written word.  If the democracy of England found themselves to-day with such a leader, it is he who would be ruling the country, and not I.”

“The man is a pacifist!” the Earl protested.

“So we all are,” the Bishop declared warmly.  “We are all pacifists in the sense that we are lovers of peace.  There is not one of us who does not deplore the horrors of to-day.  There is not one of us who is not passionately seeking for the master mind which can lead us out of it.”