d
silently with his lips the words, "Remember my anthem."

"He idealises so much," Amarinth went on easily. "Of course a real
carouse is horribly inartistic. Excess always is, although Oscar Wilde
has said that nothing succeeds like it."

"Excess is very evil," Mr. Smith said rather rigidly. "Excess in
everything seems to be characteristic of our age. I could wish that
many would return to the ascetic life. No wine, thank you."

"Indeed, yes," said Mrs. Windsor, "that is what I always think. There is
something so beautiful in not eating and drinking, and not marrying, and
all that; but at least we must acknowledge that celibacy is quite coming
into fashion. Our young men altogether refuse to marry nowadays. Let us
hope that is a step in the right direction."

"If they married more and drank less, I don't fancy their morals would
suffer much," Madame Valtesi remarked with exceeding dryness, looking at
Mr. Smith's budding tonsure through her tortoise-shell eyeglass.

"The monastic life is very beautiful," said Lord Reggie. "I always find
when I go to a monastery, that the monks give me very excellent wine. I
suppose they keep all their hair shirts for their own private use."

"That is the truest hospitality, isn't it," said Lady Locke.

"The high church party are showing us the right way," Mr. Amarinth
remarked impressively, with a side-anthem glance at Lord Reggie which
spoke volumes. "They understand the value of aestheticism in religion.
They recognise the fact that a beautiful vestment uplifts the soul far
more than a dozen bad chants by Stainer, or Barnby, or any other
unmusical Christian. The average Anglican chant is one of the most
unimaginative, unpoetical things in the world. It always reminds me of
the cart-horse parade on Whit Monday. A brown Gregorian is so much more
devotional."

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Smith, who had been listening to these
remarks with acquiescence, but who now manifested some obvious
confusion.

"A brown Gregorian," Mr. Amarinth repeated. "All combinations of sounds
convey a sense of colour to the mind. Gregorians are obviously of a rich
and sombre brown, just as a Salvation Army hymn is a violent magenta."

"I think the Bishops are beginning to understand Gregorian music a
little better. No plover's eggs, thank you," said Mr. Smith, who was
totally without a sense of melody, but who assumed a complete musical
authority, based on the fact that he intoned in church.

"Th