d, and if you think otherwise you are
deceiving yourself; you are not being realistic. In that respect you are
no better than anybody else."

"What was my other motive, then?" she enquired submissively, as if
appealing for information to the greatest living authority on the
enigmas of her own heart.

"Your other motive was to satisfy your damnable instinct for dubious and
picturesque adventure," said Mr. Prohack. "You were pandering to the
evil in you. If you could have stopped the clock from striking by
walking down Bond Street in Mrs. Slipstone's clothes and especially her
boots, would you have done it? Certainly not. Of course you wouldn't.
Don't try to come the self-sacrificing saint over me, because you can't
do it."

These words, even if amounting to a just estimate of the situation, were
ruthless and terrible. They might have accomplished some genuine and
lasting good if Mr. Prohack had spoken them in a tone corresponding to
their import. But he did not. His damnable instinct for pleasing people
once more got the better of him, and he spoke them in a benevolent and
paternal tone, his voice vibrating with compassion and with appreciation
of her damnable instinct for dubious and picturesque adventure. The tone
destroyed the significance of the words.

Moreover, not content with the falsifying tone, he rose up from his
chair as he spoke, approached the charming and naughty girl, and patted
her on the shoulder. The rebuke, indeed, ended by being more agreeable
to the sinner than praise might have been from a man less corroded with
duplicity than Mr. Prohack.

Mimi surprised him a second time.

"You're perfectly right," she said. "You always are." And she seized his
limp hand in hers and kissed it,--and ran away, leaving him looking at
the kissed hand.

Well, he was flattered, and he was pleased; or at any rate something in
him, some fragmentary part of him, was flattered and pleased. Mimi's
gesture was a triumph for a man nearing fifty; but it was an alarming
triumph.... Odd that in that moment he should think of Lady Massulam!
His fatal charm was as a razor. Had he been playing with it as a baby
might play with a razor?... Popinjay? Coxcomb? Perhaps, Nevertheless,
the wench had artistically kissed his hand, and his hand felt
self-complacent, even if he didn't.

Brool, towards whom Mr. Prohack felt no impulse of good-will, came
largely in with a salver on which were the morning letters and the
morning pape