’Victor Radnor has the oldest in the kingdom.  But he will have the best of everything.  A Romanee!  A Musigny!  Sip, my friend, you embrace the Goddess of your choice above.  You are up beside her at a sniff of that wine.—­And lo, venerable Drury! we duck through the court, reminded a bit by our feelings of our first love, who hadn’t the cleanest of faces or nicest of manners, but she takes her station in memory because we were boys then, and the golden halo of youth is upon her.’

Carling, as a man of the world, acquiesced in souvenirs he did not share.  He said urgently:  ’Understand me; you speak of Mr. Radnor; pray, believe I have the greatest respect for Mr. Radnor’s abilities.  He is one of our foremost men . . . proud of him.  Mr. Radnor has genius; I have watched him; it is genius; he shows it in all he does; one of the memorable men of our times.  I can admire him, independent of—­well, misfortune of that kind . . . a mistaken early step.  Misfortune, it is to be named.  Between ourselves—­we are men of the world—­if one could see the way!  She occasionally . . . as I have told you.  I have ventured suggestions.  As I have mentioned, I have received an impression . . .’

’But still, Mr. Carling, if the lady doesn’t release him and will keep his name, she might stop her cowardly persecutions.’

‘Can you trace them?’

‘Undisguised!’

’Mrs. Burman Radnor is devout.  I should not exactly say revengeful.  We have to discriminate.  I gather, that her animus is, in all honesty, directed at the—­I quote—­state of sin.  We are mixed, you know.’

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,