g greater than his own, he fell into the position of
observer. Instead of the profound questions he had somehow expected to
hear raised, everybody seemed gossiping, or searching the heart of such
topics as where to go this summer, or how to get new servants. Trifling
with coffee-cups, they dissected their fellow artists in the same way
as his society friends of the other night had dissected the
fellow--"smart"; and the varnish on the floor, the pictures, and the
piano were reflected on all the faces around. Shelton moved from group
to group disconsolate.

A tall, imposing person stood under a Japanese print holding the palm of
one hand outspread; his unwieldy trunk and thin legs wobbled in concert
to his ingratiating voice.

"War," he was saying, "is not necessary. War is not necessary. I hope I
make myself clear. War is not necessary; it depends on nationality, but
nationality is not necessary." He inclined his head to one side, "Why
do we have nationality? Let us do away with boundaries--let us have the
warfare of commerce. If I see France looking at Brighton"--he laid his
head upon one side, and beamed at Shelton,--"what do I do? Do I say
'Hands off'? No. 'Take it,' I say--take it!'" He archly smiled. "But do
you think they would?"

And the softness of his contours fascinated Shelton.

"The soldier," the person underneath the print resumed, "is necessarily
on a lower plane--intellectually--oh, intellectually--than the
philanthropist. His sufferings are less acute; he enjoys the
compensations of advertisement--you admit that?" he breathed
persuasively. "For instance--I am quite impersonal--I suffer; but do I
talk about it?" But, someone gazing at his well-filled waistcoat, he put
his thesis in another form: "I have one acre and one cow, my brother has
one acre and one cow: do I seek to take them away from him?"

Shelton hazarded, "Perhaps you 're weaker than your brother."

"Come, come! Take the case of women: now, I consider our marriage laws
are barbarous."

For the first time Shelton conceived respect for them; he made a
comprehensive gesture, and edged himself into the conversation of
another group, for fear of having all his prejudices overturned. Here an
Irish sculptor, standing in a curve, was saying furiously, "Bees are
not bhumpkins, d---n their sowls!" A Scotch painter, who listened with
a curly smile, seemed trying to compromise this proposition, which
appeared to have relation to the middle classes