“I repeat,” said the gentleman with the black pearl stud, “that the days for romantic adventure and deeds of foolish daring have passed, and that the fault lies with ourselves.  Voyages to the pole I do not catalogue as adventures.  That African explorer, young Chetney, who turned up yesterday after he was supposed to have died in Uganda, did nothing adventurous.  He made maps and explored the sources of rivers.  He was in constant danger, but the presence of danger does not constitute adventure.  Were that so, the chemist who studies high explosives, or who investigates deadly poisons, passes through adventures daily.  No, ‘adventures are for the adventurous.’  But one no longer ventures.  The spirit of it has died of inertia.  We are grown too practical, too just, above all, too sensible.  In this room, for instance, members of this Club have, at the sword’s point, disputed the proper scanning of one of Pope’s couplets.  Over so weighty a matter as spilled Burgundy on a gentleman’s cuff, ten men fought across this table, each with his rapier in one hand and a candle in the other.  All ten were wounded.  The question of the spilled Burgundy concerned but two of them.  The eight others engaged because they were men of ‘spirit.’  They were, indeed, the first gentlemen of the day.  To-night, were you to spill Burgundy on my cuff, were you even to insult me grossly, these gentlemen would not consider it incumbent upon them to kill each other.  They would separate us, and to-morrow morning appear as witnesses against us at Bow Street.  We have here to-night, in the persons of Sir Andrew and myself, an illustration of how the ways have changed.”

The men around the table turned and glanced toward the gentleman in front of the fireplace.  He was an elderly and somewhat portly person, with a kindly, wrinkled countenance, which wore continually a smile of almost childish confidence and good-nature.  It was a face which the illustrated prints had made intimately familiar.  He held a book from him at arm’s-length, as if to adjust his eyesight, and his brows were knit with interest.

“Now, were this the eighteenth century,” continued the gentleman with the black pearl, “when Sir Andrew left the Club to-night I would have him bound and gagged and thrown into a sedan chair.  The watch would not interfere, the passers-by would take to their heels, my hired bullies and ruffians would convey him to some lonely spot where we would guard him until morning.  Nothing would come of it, except added reputation to myself as a gentleman of adventurous spirit, and possibly an essay in the ‘Tatler’ with stars for names, entitled, let us say, ‘The Budget and the Baronet.’”

“But to what end, sir?” inquired the youngest of the members.  “And why Sir Andrew, of all persons—­why should you select him for this adventure?”

The gentleman with the black pearl shrugged his shoulders.