too
much--what shall I say--romantic?--flirtatious?--meaning to this affair?
I don't mind that after my rather lavish confessions you should
consider me a rather oversexed person, but isn't your attitude rather
unfair,--unjust, indeed, and almost insulting, to this Miss Grammont?
After all, she's a young lady of very good social position indeed.
She doesn't strike you--does she?--as an undignified or helpless human
being. Her manners suggest a person of considerable self-control. And
knowing less of me than you do, she probably regards me as almost as
safe as--a maiden aunt say. I'm twice her age. We are a party of four.
There are conventions, there are considerations.... Aren't you really,
my dear Martineau, overdoing all this side of this very pleasant little
enlargement of our interests."

"AM I?" said Dr. Martineau and brought a scrutinizing eye to bear on Sir
Richmond's face.

"I want to go on talking to Miss Grammont for a day or so," Sir Richmond
admitted.

"Then I shall prefer to leave your party."

There were some moments of silence.

"I am really very sorry to find myself in this dilemma," said Sir
Richmond with a note of genuine regret in his voice.

"It is not a dilemma," said Dr. Martineau, with a corresponding loss of
asperity. "I grant you we discover we differ upon a question of taste
and convenience. But before I suggested this trip, I had intended to
spend a little time with my old friend Sir Kenelm Latter at Bournemouth.
Nothing simpler than to go to him now...."

"I shall be sorry all the same."

"I could have wished," said the doctor, "that these ladies had happened
a little later...."

The matter was settled. Nothing more of a practical nature remained to
be said. But neither gentleman wished to break off with a harsh and bare
decision.

"When the New Age is here," said Sir Richmond, "then, surely, a
friendship between a man and a woman will not be subjected to the--the
inconveniences your present code would set about it? They would travel
about together as they chose?"

"The fundamental principle of the new age," said the doctor, "will be
Honi soit qui mal y pense. In these matters. With perhaps Fay ce
que vouldras as its next injunction. So long as other lives are not
affected. In matters of personal behaviour the world will probably be
much more free and individuals much more open in their conscience
and honour than they have ever been before. In matters of property,
economics a