“Come and see my cannas!  They are prefect just now.  I must tell you a story about them—­it’s the wildest romance.  I am the only person in Europe who understands the proper cultivation of cannas.  I shall have scented ones soon.”

“Don’t they smell?” enquired the bishop absent-mindedly.

“Not yet.  You are looking a little tired, Heard, as if you had not slept well lately.  Perhaps you would like to sit down?  We can watch the fireworks from the terrace.  You ought to read Pepys’ diary.  That is what I have been doing.  I am also rather low-spirited just now.  The end of another spring, you know—­it always makes me feel sad.  Pepys is the antidote.  He is a tonic.  Every Englishman ought to be compelled, for the good of his soul, to go through Pepys once in three years.”

“I must read him again,” said the bishop who was not particularly interested in the diarist just then.

“His universal zest!  It seems to be extinct nowadays; it is a charm that I have not discovered in any living Englishman.  What a healthy outlook!  Not a trace of straining anywhere.  He took life with both hands.  How he threw himself into his work, his amusements, his clothes and women and politics and food and theatres and pictures.  Warm heart, cool head.  So childlike, and yet so wise.  There’s only one thing that troubles me about him—­his love of music.  It was so obviously sincere.  He not only liked it; he actually understood it.  Music, to me, is a succession of sounds more or less painful.  I can’t even whistle.  It’s too bad.”

The bishop said: 

“If the lives of all of us were written down with the same remorseless candour, how few would stand the test.”

He was thinking of the Devil’s Rock.

“I don’t trouble about tests,” replied Keith.  “The whole herd of humanity adapts its pace to that of the weakest lamb.  The capacity of the weakest lamb—­that is the test.  I don’t consider myself bound to such a vulgar standard.  And how spectacular we are, in matters of so-called right and wrong.  That is because we have painfully cultivated the social conscience.  Posing, and playing to the gallery!  Mankind is curiously melodramatic, my dear fellow; full of affected reverence for its droll little institutions.  As if anybody really cared what another person does!  As if everybody were not chuckling inwardly all the time!”

“Surely there are heights and depths in the matter of conduct?”

“I don’t trouble about heights and depths.  Does it not all depend upon where we take up our stand?  Must we always remain stationary like vegetables?  A bird knows nothing of heights and depths.  You sit here at night-time and look at the stars.  They are firm-fixed, you say.  Well, they are not firm-fixed.  Therefore it is the wrong way to look at them.  I have also written a diary, Heard.  It is my legacy to posterity and will be published after my death.  It relates of actions not all of which Count Caloveglia would call pretty.  Perhaps it will give some people the courage of their unspoken convictions.”