’Why, I rather thought of sticking to my books.  But if the fogs are very bad —­’

‘And you would seriously advise us to give up the house?’

’My dear fellow, how can you hesitate?  Your wife is quite right; there’s not one good word to be said for the ordinary life of an English household.  Flee from it!  Live anywhere and anyhow, but don’t keep house in England.  Wherever I go, it’s the same cry:  domestic life is played out.  There isn’t a servant to be had —­ unless you’re a Duke and breed them on your own estate.  All ordinary housekeepers are at the mercy of the filth and insolence of a draggle-tailed, novelette-reading feminine democracy.  Before very long we shall train an army of menservants, and send the women to the devil.’

‘Queer thing, Rolfe,’ put in his friend, with a laugh; ’I’ve noticed it of late, you’re getting to be a regular woman-hater.’

’Not a bit of it.  I hate a dirty, lying, incapable creature, that’s all, whether man or woman.  No doubt they’re more common in petticoats.’

‘Been to the Frothinghams’ lately?’

‘No.’

‘I used to think you were there rather often.’

Rolfe gave a sort of grunt, and kept silence.

‘To my mind,’ pursued the other, ’the best thing about Alma is that she appreciates my wife.  She has really a great admiration for Sibyl; no sham about it, I’m sure.  I don’t pretend to know much about women, but I fancy that kind of thing isn’t common —­ real friendship and admiration between them.  People always say so, at all events.’

‘I take refuge once more,’ said Rolfe, ‘in my fathomless ignorance.’

He rose from his chair, and sat down again on a corner of the table.  Carnaby stood up, threw his arms above his head, and yawned with animal vehemence, the expression of an intolerable ennui.

’There’s something damnably wrong with us all —­ that’s the one thing certain.’

‘Idleness, for one thing,’ said Rolfe.

’Yes.  And I’m too old to do anything.  Why didn’t I follow Miles into the army?  I think I was more cut out for that than for anything else.  I often feel I should like to go to South Africa and get up a little war of my own.’

Rolfe shouted with laughter.

‘Not half a bad idea, and the easiest thing in the world, no doubt.’

‘Nigger-hunting; a superior big game.’

‘There’s more than that to do in South Africa,’ said Harvey.  ’I was looking at a map in Stanford’s window the other day, and it amused me.  Who believes for a moment that England will remain satisfied with bits here and there?  We have to swallow the whole, of course.  We shall go on fighting and annexing, until —­ until the decline and fall of the British Empire.  That hasn’t begun yet.  Some of us are so over-civilised that it makes a reaction of wholesome barbarism in the rest.  We shall fight like blazes in the twentieth century.  It’s the only thing that keeps Englishmen sound; commercialism is their curse.  Happily, no sooner do they get fat than they kick, and somebody’s shin suffers; then they fight off the excessive flesh.  War is England’s Banting.’