a king or a butler or a family solicitor--if you like."

He paused again.

Lady Harman had been following him with an attentive reluctance.

"But what are we to do," she asked, "we people who are puzzled by life,
who want guidance and ideas and--help, if--if all the people we look to
for ideas are----"

"Bad characters."

"Well,--it's your theory, you know--bad characters?"

Wilkins answered with the air of one who carefully disentangles a
complex but quite solvable problem. "It doesn't follow," he said, "that
because a man is a bad character he's not to be trusted in matters where
character--as we commonly use the word--doesn't come in. These
sensitives, these--would you mind if I were to call myself an Aeolian
Harp?--these Aeolian Harps; they can't help responding to the winds of
heaven. Well,--listen to them. Don't follow them, don't worship them,
don't even honour them, but listen to them. Don't let anyone stop them
from saying and painting and writing and singing what they want to.
Freedom, canvas and attention, those are the proper honours for the
artist, the poet and the philosopher. Listen to the noise they make,
watch the stuff they produce, and presently you will find certain
things among the multitude of things that are said and shown and put out
and published, something--light in _your_ darkness--a writer for you,
something for you. Nobody can have a greater contempt for artists and
writers and poets and philosophers than I, oh! a squalid crew they are,
mean, jealous, pugnacious, disgraceful in love, _disgraceful_--but out
of it all comes the greatest serenest thing, the mind of the world,
Literature. Nasty little midges, yes,--but fireflies--carrying light for
the darkness."

His face was suddenly lit by enthusiasm and she wondered that she could
have thought it rather heavy and commonplace. He stopped abruptly and
glanced beyond her at her other neighbour who seemed on the verge of
turning to them again. "If I go on," he said with a voice suddenly
dropped, "I shall talk loud."

"You know," said Lady Harman, in a halty undertone, "you--you are too
hard upon--upon clever people, but it is true. I mean it is true in a
way...."

"Go on, I understand exactly what you are saying."

"I mean, there _are_ ideas. It's just that, that is so--so----I mean
they seem never to be just there and always to be present."

"Like God. Never in the flesh--now. A spirit everywhere. You think
exactly as I do, Lady