ke a thread, like a thre-eda o-of scar-let, and thy
speech, thy spee-eech i-is come-ly," they squealed at the top of their
village voices, strong in the possession of complete unmusicalness. And
Lord Reggie wandered about over the piano, holding his fair head on one
side, and smiling upon them with his pale blue eyes. He trusted rather
in repetition than in correction, and eliminated the wrong notes
gradually by dint of playing the right ones himself over and over again.

After hearing his anthem about five times, Mrs. Windsor and her guests
adjourned to the garden, leaving Tommy Locke seated on the music stool
by Lord Reggie's side, gazing at him with excited adoration, and joining
in the chorus with all his might.

Amarinth accompanied Lady Locke.

"Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet," he murmured, "like a thread of
scarlet. Solomon must have lived a very beautiful life. He understood
the art of life, the magic of moods. Why do we not all live for our own
sensations, instead of for other people? Why do we consider the world
at all? The world taken _en masse_ is a monster, crammed with
prejudices, packed with prepossessions, cankered with what it calls
virtues, a puritan, a prig. And the art of life is the art of defiance.
To defy. That is what we ought to live for, instead of living, as we do,
to acquiesce. The world divides actions into three classes: good
actions, bad actions that you may do, and bad actions that you may not
do. If you stick to the good actions, you are respected by the good. If
you stick to the bad actions that you may do, you are respected by the
bad. But if you perform the bad actions that no one may do, then the
good and the bad set upon you, and you are lost indeed. How I hate that
word natural."

"Why? I think it is one of the most beautiful of words."

"How strange! To me it means all that is middle-class, all that is of
the essence of jingoism, all that is colourless, and without form, and
void. It might be a beautiful word, but it is the most debased coin in
the currency of language. Certain things are classed as natural, and
certain things are classed as unnatural--for all the people born into
the world. Individualism is not allowed to enter into the matter. A
child is unnatural if it hates its mother. A mother is unnatural if she
does not wish to have children. A man is unnatural if he never falls in
love with a woman. A boy is unnatural if he prefers looking at pictures
to playin