This child would grow up in an atmosphere of luxury and self-indulgence; it would be bullying the servants at the age of six, and talking scandal and smoking cigarettes at twelve.  It would be petted and admired and stared at, and paraded about in state, dressed up like a French doll; it would drink in snobbery and hatefulness with the very air it breathed.  One might meet in these great houses little tots not yet in their teens whose talk was all of the cost of things, and of the inferiority of their neighbours.  There was nothing in the world too good for them.—­They had little miniature automobiles to ride about the country in, and blooded Arabian ponies, and doll-houses in real Louis Seize, with jewelled rugs and miniature electric lights.  At Mrs. Caroline Smythe’s, Montague was introduced to a pale and anaemic-looking youth of thirteen, who dined in solemn state alone when the rest of the family was away, and insisted upon having all the footmen in attendance; and his unfortunate aunt brought a storm about her ears by forbidding the butler to take champagne upstairs into the nursery before lunch.

A little remark stayed in Montague’s mind as expressing the attitude of Society toward such matters.  Major Venable had chanced to remark jestingly that children were coming to understand so much nowadays that it was necessary for the ladies to be careful.  To which Mrs. Vivie Patton answered, with a sudden access of seriousness:  “I don’t know—­do you find that children have any morals?  Mine haven’t.”

And then the fascinating Mrs. Vivie went on to tell the truth about her own children.  They were natural-born savages, and that was all there was to it.  They did as they pleased, and no one could stop them.  The Major replied that nowadays all the world was doing as it pleased, and no one seemed to be able to stop it; and with that jest the conversation was turned to other matters.  But Montague sat in silence, thinking about it—­wondering what would happen to the world when it had fallen under the sway of this generation of spoiled children, and had adopted altogether the religion of doing as one pleased.

In the beginning people had simply done as they pleased spontaneously, and without thinking about it; but now, Montague discovered, the custom had spread to such an extent that it was developing a philosophy.  There was springing up a new cult, whose devotees were planning to make over the world upon the plan of doing as one pleased.  Because its members were wealthy, and able to command the talent of the world, the cult was developing an art, with a highly perfected technique, and a literature which was subtle and exquisite and alluring.  Europe had had such a literature for a century, and England for a generation or two.  And now America was having it, too!

Montague had an amusing insight into this one day, when Mrs. Vivie invited him to one of her “artistic evenings.”  Mrs. Vivie was in touch with a special set which went in for intellectual things, and included some amateur Bohemians and men of “genius.”  “Don’t you come if you’ll be shocked,” she had said to him—­“for Strathcona will be there.”