“Looks a bit of a bounder,” said the racing man.

Shelton gazed at the twitching eyebrows of old Stroud; he saw at once how it must annoy a man who had a billet in the “Woods and Forests,” and plenty of time for “bridge” and gossip at his club, to see these people with untidy lives.  A minute later the man with the “game leg” passed close behind his chair, and Shelton perceived at once how intelligible the resentment of his fellow-members was.  He had eyes which, not uncommon in this country, looked like fires behind steel bars; he seemed the very kind of man to do all sorts of things that were “bad form,” a man who might even go as far as chivalry.  He looked straight at Shelton, and his uncompromising glance gave an impression of fierce loneliness; altogether, an improper person to belong to such a club.  Shelton remembered the words of an old friend of his father’s:  “Yes, Dick, all sorts of fellows belong here, and they come here for all sorts o’ reasons, and a lot of em come because they’ve nowhere else to go, poor beggars”; and, glancing from the man with the “game leg” to Stroud, it occurred to Shelton that even he, old Stroud, might be one of these poor beggars.  One never knew!  A look at Benjy, contained and cheery, restored him.  Ah, the lucky devil!  He would not have to come here any more! and the thought of the last evening he himself would be spending before long flooded his mind with a sweetness that was almost pain.

“Benjy, I’ll play you a hundred up!” said young Bill Dennant.

Stroud and the racing man went to watch the game; Shelton was left once more to reverie.

“Good form!” thought he; “that fellow must be made of steel.  They’ll go on somewhere; stick about half the night playing poker, or some such foolery.”

He crossed over to the window.  Rain had begun to fall; the streets looked wild and draughty.  The cabmen were putting on their coats.  Two women scurried by, huddled under one umbrella, and a thin-clothed, dogged-looking scarecrow lounged past with a surly, desperate step.  Shelton, returning to his chair, threaded his way amongst his fellow-members.  A procession of old school and college friends came up before his eyes.  After all, what had there been in his own education, or theirs, to give them any other standard than this “good form”?  What had there been to teach them anything of life?  Their imbecility was incredible when you came to think of it.  They had all the air of knowing everything, and really they knew nothing—­nothing of Nature, Art, or the Emotions; nothing of the bonds that bind all men together.  Why, even such words were not “good form”; nothing outside their little circle was “good form.”  They had a fixed point of view over life because they came of certain schools, and colleges, and regiments!  And they were those in charge of the state, of laws, and science, of the army, and religion.  Well, it was their system—­the system not to start too young, to form healthy fibre, and let the after-life develop it!