digestion and prime claret; the hour when
the wise youth Adrian delighted to talk at his ease--to recline in dreamy
consciousness that a work of good was going on inside him; these
abstractions from his studies, excesses of gaiety, and glumness, heavings
of the chest, and other odd signs, but mainly the disgusting behaviour of
his pupil at the dinner-table, taught Adrian to understand, though the
young gentleman was clever in excuses, that he had somehow learnt there
was another half to the divided Apple of Creation, and had embarked upon
the great voyage of discovery of the difference between the two halves.
With his usual coolness Adrian debated whether he might be in the
observatory or the practical stage of the voyage. For himself, as a man
and a philosopher, Adrian had no objection to its being either; and he
had only to consider which was temporarily most threatening to the
ridiculous System he had to support. Richard's absence annoyed him. The
youth was vivacious, and his enthusiasm good fun; and besides, when he
left table, Adrian had to sit alone with Hippias and the Eighteenth
Century, from both of whom he had extracted all the amusement that could
be got, and he saw his digestion menaced by the society of two ruined
stomachs, who bored him just when he loved himself most. Poor Hippias was
now so reduced that he had profoundly to calculate whether a particular
dish, or an extra-glass of wine, would have a bitter effect on him and be
felt through the remainder of his years. He was in the habit of uttering
his calculations half aloud, wherein the prophetic doubts of experience,
and the succulent insinuations of appetite, contended hotly. It was
horrible to hear him, so let us pardon Adrian for tempting him to a
decision in favour of the moment.

"Happy to take wine with you," Adrian would say, and Hippias would regard
the decanter with a pained forehead, and put up the doctor.

"Drink, nephew Hippy, and think of the doctor to-morrow!" the Eighteenth
Century cheerily ruffles her cap at him, and recommends her own practice.

"It's this literary work!" interjects Hippias, handling his glass of
remorse. "I don't know what else it can be. You have no idea how anxious
I feel. I have frightful dreams. I'm perpetually anxious."

"No wonder," says Adrian, who enjoys the childish simplicity to which an
absorbed study of his sensational existence has brought poor Hippias. "No
wonder. Ten years of Fairy Mythology! Could