could only find in life itself," said Michael, sighing, "a path
leading to something like this cottage."

"But, meanwhile, go on," Stella urged. "Do go on with your
self-revelation. It's so fascinating to me. It's like a chord that never
resolves itself, or a melody flitting in and out of a symphony."

"Something rather pathetic in fact," Michael suggested.

"Oh, no, much too elusive and independent to be pathetic," she assured
him.

"My difficulty is that by natural inheritance I'm the possessor of so
much I can never make use of," Michael began again. "I'm not merely
discontented from a sense of envy. That trivial sort of envy doesn't
enter my head. Indeed, I don't think I'm ever discontented or even
resentful for one moment, but if I _were_ the head of a great family I
should have my duties set out in a long line before me, and all my
theories of what a gentleman owes to the state would be weighted down
with importance, or at any rate with potential significance, whereas
now----" he shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't see much difference really," Stella said. "You're not
prevented from being a gentleman and proving it on a smaller scale
perhaps."

"Yes, yes," Michael plunged on excitedly. "But crowds of people are
doing that, and every day more and more loudly the opinion goes up that
these gentlemen are accidental ornaments, rather useless, rather
irritating ornaments of contemporary society. Every day brings another
sneer at public schools and universities. Every new writer who commands
any attention drags out the old idol of the Noble Savage and invites us
to worship him. Only now the Noble Savage has been put into corduroy
trousers. My theory is that a gentleman leavens the great popular mass
of humanity, and however superficially useless he may seem, his
existence is a pledge of the immanence of the idea. Popular education
has fired thousands to prove themselves not gentlemen in the present
meaning of the term, but something much finer than any gentleman we know
anything about. And they are _not_, they simply and solidly are _not_.
The first instinct of the gentleman is respect for the past with all it
connotes of art and religion and thought. The first instinct of the
educated unfit is to hate and destroy the past. Now I maintain that the
average gentleman, whatever situation he is called upon to face, will
deal with it more effectively than these noble savages who have been
armed with weapons they don't k