’Character, yes, valuable—­I do wish you had named to-night for doing me the honour of dining with me!’ said the lawyer impulsively, in a rapture of the appetite for anecdotes.  ’I have a ripe Pichon Longueville, ‘65.’

’A fine wine.  Seductive to hear of.  I dine with my friend Victor Radnor.  And he knows wine.—­There are good women in the world, Mr. Carling, whose characters . . .’

’Of course, of course there are; and I could name you some.  We lawyers . . . . !’

‘You encounter all sorts.’

‘Between ourselves,’ Carling sank his tones to the indiscriminate, where it mingled with the roar of London.

‘You do?’ Fenellan hazarded a guess at having heard enlightened liberal opinions regarding the sex.  ‘Right!’

‘Many!’

‘I back you, Mr. Carling.’

The lawyer pushed to yet more confidential communication, up to the verge of the clearly audible:  he spoke of examples, experiences.  Fenellan backed him further.

‘Acting on behalf of clients, you understand, Mr. Fenellan.’

‘Professional, but charitable; I am with you.’

‘Poor things! we—­if we have to condemn—­we owe them something.’

’A kind word for poor Polly Venus, with all the world against her!  She doesn’t hear it often.’

‘A real service,’ Carling’s voice deepened to the legal ’without prejudice,’—­’I am bound to say it—­a service to Society.’

‘Ah, poor wench!  And the kind of reward she gets?’

’We can hardly examine . . . mysterious dispensations . . . here we are to make the best we can of it.’

’For the creature Society’s indebted to?  True.  And am I to think there’s a body of legal gentlemen to join with you, my friend, in founding an Institution to distribute funds to preach charity over the country, and win compassion for her, as one of the principal persons of her time, that Society’s indebted to for whatever it’s indebted for?’

‘Scarcely that,’ said Carling, contracting.

’But you ‘re for great Reforms?’

‘Gradual.’

‘Then it’s for Reformatories, mayhap.’

‘They would hardly be a cure.’

’You ‘re in search of a cure?’

‘It would be a blessed discovery.’

‘But what’s to become of Society?’

‘It’s a puzzle to the cleverest.’

’All through History, my dear Mr. Carling, we see that.

‘Establishments must have their sacrifices.  Beware of interfering:  eh?’

‘By degrees, we may hope . . . .’

’Society prudently shuns the topic; and so ’ll we.  For we might tell of one another, in a fit of distraction, that t’ other one talked of it, and we should be banished for an offence against propriety.  You should read my friend Durance’s Essay on Society.  Lawyers are a buttress of Society.  But, come:  I wager they don’t know what they support until they read that Essay.’