hort. I should like to taste of every pleasure--of
every emotion; and what have I tasted? Nothing. I have done nothing.
I have wheedled a few women who wanted to be wheedled, that is all."

CHAPTER IX

"And how are you, old chap? I am delighted to see you."

"I'm equally glad to see you. You have made alterations in the place
... I came down from London with a lot of Johnnies and tarts--Kitty
Carew, Laura Stanley and her sister. I got Dicky the driver to turn
in here. You were playing the _Dies Irae_. I never was more impressed
in my life. You should have seen the coach beneath the great window
... St. George overcoming the Johnnies ... the tumult of the organ ...
and I couldn't stand singing 'Two Lovely Black Eyes.' I sickened of
them--the whole thing--and I felt I must see you."

"And are they outside?"

"No; they have gone off."

Relieved of fear of intrusion, John laughed loudly, and commented
humorously on the spectacle of the Brighton coach filled with
revellers drawn up beneath his window. Then, to discuss the
window--the quality of the glass--he turned out the lamps; the hall
filled with the legend, and their hearts full of it, and delighting
in the sensation of each other, they walked up and down the echoing
hall. John remembered a certain fugue by Bach, and motioning to the
page to blow, he seated himself at the key-board. The celestial
shield and crest still remained in little colour. Mike saw John's
hands moving over the key-board, and his soul went out in worship of
that soul, divided from the world's pleasure, self-sufficing, alone;
seeking God only in his home of organ fugue and legended pane. He
understood the nobleness and purity which was now about him--it
seemed impossible to him to return to Kitty.

Swift and complete reaction had come upon him, and choked with the
moral sulphur of the last twenty-four hours, he craved the breath of
purity. He must talk of Plato's _Republic_, of Wagner's operas, of
Schopenhauer; even Lily was not now so imperative as these; and next
day, after lunch, when the question of his departure was alluded to,
Mike felt it was impossible to leave John; but persecuted with
scruples of disloyalty to Kitty, he resisted his friend's invitation
to stay. He urged he had no clothes. John offered to send the
coachman into Brighton for what he wanted.

"But perhaps you have no money," John said, inadvertently, and a look
of apprehension passed into his face.

"Oh, I