He had lately attacked, in Corsair fashion, the Greek philosophers and had disembowelled Plato, Aristotle and the rest of them, to his complete satisfaction, in a couple of months; at present he was up to the ears in psychology, and his talk bristled with phrases about the “function of the real,” about reactions, reflexes, adjustments and stimuli.  For all his complexity there was something so childlike in his nature that he never realized what an infliction he was, nor how tiresome his conversation could become to people who were not quite so avid of “disinterested thought.”  Living alone and spending too much time in unprofitable studies, his language was apt to be professionally devoid of humour—­a defect he made heroic efforts to remedy by what he called the “Falernian system.”  It was the fault of his mother, he said; she was a painfully conscientious woman.  A man’s worst enemies are his parents, he would add.

So far as was known, Mr. Keith had never written a book, a pamphlet, or even a letter to the newspapers.  He maintained a good deal of correspondence, however, in different parts of the world, and the wiser of those who were favoured with his epistles preserved them as literary curiosities, under lock and key, by reason of the writer’s rare faculty of expressing the most atrocious things in correct and even admirable English.  Chaster than snow as a conversationalist, he prostituted his mother-tongue, in letter-writing, to the vilest of uses.  Friends of long standing called him an obscene old man.  When taxed with this failing—­by Mr. Eames, for instance, who shivered at what he called PRAETEXTATA Verba—­he would hint that he could afford to pay for his little whims, meaning, presumably, that a rich man is not to be judged by common standards of propriety.  Such language was particularly galling to Mr. Eames, who held that the possession of wealth entails not only privileges but obligations, and that the rich man should set the example of purity in words and deeds, etc., etc., etc.

They were always disagreeing, anyhow.

“You exalt purity to a bad eminence,” Keith would remark.  “What did you say about the book I lent you the other day?  You said it was morbid and indecent; you said that no clean-minded person would car to read it.  And yet, after an unnecessary amount of arguing, you were forced to admit that the subject was interesting and that the writer dealt with it in an interesting manner.  What more can you expect from an author?  Believe me, this hankering after purity, this hypersensitiveness as to what is morbid or immoral, is by no means a good sign.  A healthy man refuses to be hampered by preconceived notions of what is wrong or ugly.  When he reads a book like that the either yawns or laughs.  That is because he is sure of himself.  I could give you a long list of celebrated statesmen, princes, philosophers and prelates of the Church who take pleasure, in their moments of relaxation, in what