; and though agreeing
with the Irishman, Shelton felt nervous over his discharge of
electricity. Next to them two American ladies, assembled under the tent
of hair belonging to a writer of songs, were discussing the emotions
aroused in them by Wagner's operas.

"They produce a strange condition of affairs in me," said the thinner
one.

"They 're just divine," said the fatter.

"I don't know if you can call the fleshly lusts divine," replied the
thinner, looking into the eyes of the writer of the songs.

Amidst all the hum of voices and the fumes of smoke, a sense of
formality was haunting Shelton. Sandwiched between a Dutchman and
a Prussian poet, he could understand neither of his neighbours;
so, assuming an intelligent expression, he fell to thinking that
an assemblage of free spirits is as much bound by the convention of
exchanging their ideas as commonplace people are by the convention of
having no ideas to traffic in. He could not help wondering whether,
in the bulk, they were not just as dependent on each other as the
inhabitants of Kensington; whether, like locomotives, they could run
at all without these opportunities for blowing off the steam, and what
would be left when the steam had all escaped. Somebody ceased
playing the violin, and close to him a group began discussing ethics.
Aspirations were in the air all round, like a lot of hungry ghosts. He
realised that, if tongue be given to them, the flavour vanishes from
ideas which haunt the soul.

Again the violinist played.

"Cock gracious!" said the Prussian poet, falling into English as the
fiddle ceased: "Colossal! 'Aber, wie er ist grossartig'!"

"Have you read that thing of Besom's?" asked shrill voice behind.

"Oh, my dear fellow! too horrid for words; he ought to be hanged!"

"The man's dreadful," pursued the voice, shriller than ever; "nothing
but a volcanic eruption would cure him."

Shelton turned in alarm to look at the authors of these statements. They
were two men of letters talking of a third.

"'C'est un grand naif, vous savez,'" said the second speaker.

"These fellows don't exist," resumed the first; his small eyes gleamed
with a green light, his whole face had a look as if he gnawed himself.
Though not a man of letters, Shelton could not help recognising from
those eyes what joy it was to say those words: "These fellows don't
exist!"

"Poor Besom! You know what Moulter said . . ."

Shelton turned away, as if he had been too