The Winegod in the blood of Fenellan gave a leap.  ’But, fifty thousand times more mixed, she might any moment stop the state of sin, as she calls it, if it pleased her.’

’She might try.  Our Judges look suspiciously on long delayed actions.  And there are, too, women who regard the marriage-tie as indissoluble.  She has had to combat that scruple.’

’Believer in the renewing of the engagement overhead!—­well.  But put a by-word to Mother Nature about the state of sin.  Where, do you imagine, she would lay it?  You’ll say, that Nature and Law never agreed.  They ought.’

‘The latter deferring to the former?’

’Moulding itself on her swelling proportions.  My dear dear sir, the state of sin was the continuing to live in defiance of, in contempt of, in violation of, in the total degradation of, Nature.’

‘He was under no enforcement to take the oath at the altar.’

’He was a small boy tempted by a varnished widow, with pounds of barley sugar in her pockets;—­and she already serving as a test-vessel or mortar for awful combinations in druggery!  Gilt widows are equal to decrees of Fate to us young ones.  Upon my word, the cleric who unites, and the Law that sanctions, they’re the criminals.  Victor Radnor is the noblest of fellows, the very best friend a man can have.  I will tell you:  he saved me, after I left the army, from living on the produce of my pen—­which means, if there is to be any produce, the prostrating of yourself to the level of the round middle of the public:  saved me from that!  Yes, Mr. Carling, I have trotted our thoroughfares a poor Polly of the pen; and it is owing to Victor Radnor that I can order my thoughts as an individual man again before I blacken paper.  Owing to him, I have a tenderness for mercenaries; having been one of them and knowing how little we can help it.  He is an Olympian—­who thinks of them below.  The lady also is an admirable woman at all points.  The pair are a mated couple, such as you won’t find in ten households over Christendom.  Are you aware of the story?’

Carling replied:  ’A story under shadow of the Law, has generally two very distinct versions.’

’Hear mine.—­And, by Jove! a runaway cab.  No, all right.  But a crazy cab it is, and fit to do mischief in narrow Drury.  Except that it’s sheer riff-raff here to knock over.’

‘Hulloa?—­come!’ quoth the wary lawyer.

’There’s the heart I wanted to rouse to hear me!  One may be sure that the man for old Burgundy has it big and sound, in spite of his legal practices; a dear good spherical fellow!  Some day, we’ll hope, you will be sitting with us over a magnum of Victor Radnor’s Romance Conti aged thirty-one:  a wine, you’ll say at the second glass, High Priest for the celebration of the uncommon nuptials between the body and the soul of man.’