But Bertram Ingledew gazed at him in the blankest astonishment.  “No taboos!” he exclaimed, taken aback.  “Why, I’ve read of hundreds.  Among nomological students, England has always been regarded with the greatest interest as the home and centre of the highest and most evolved taboo development.  And you yourself,” he added with a courteous little bow, “have already supplied me with quite half a dozen.  But perhaps you call them by some other name among yourselves; though in origin and essence, of course, they’re precisely the same as the other taboos I’ve been examining so long in Asia and Africa.  However, I’m afraid I’m detaining you from the function of your joss-house.  You wish, no doubt, to make your genuflexions in the Temple of Respectability.”

And he reflected silently on the curious fact that the English give themselves by law fifty-two weekly holidays a year, and compel themselves by custom to waste them entirely in ceremonial observances.

III

On the way to church, the Monteiths sifted out their new acquaintance.

“Well, what do you make of him, Frida?” Philip asked, leaning back in his place, with a luxurious air, as soon as the carriage had turned the corner.  “Lunatic or sharper?”

Frida gave an impatient gesture with her neatly gloved hand.  “For my part,” she answered without a second’s hesitation, “I make him neither:  I find him simply charming.”

“That’s because he praised your dress,” Philip replied, looking wise.  “Did ever you know anything so cool in your life?  Was it ignorance, now, or insolence?”

“It was perfect simplicity and naturalness,” Frida answered with confidence.  “He looked at the dress, and admired it, and being transparently naif, he didn’t see why he shouldn’t say so.  It wasn’t at all rude, I thought—­and it gave me pleasure.”

“He certainly has in some ways charming manners,” Philip went on more slowly.  “He manages to impress one.  If he’s a madman, which I rather more than half suspect, it’s at least a gentlemanly form of madness.”

“His manners are more than merely charming,” Frida answered, quite enthusiastic, for she had taken a great fancy at first sight to the mysterious stranger.  “They’ve such absolute freedom.  That’s what strikes me most in them.  They’re like the best English aristocratic manners, without the insolence; or the freest American manners, without the roughness.  He’s extremely distinguished.  And, oh, isn’t he handsome!”

“He is good-looking,” Philip assented grudgingly.  Philip owned a looking-glass, and was therefore accustomed to a very high standard of manly beauty.