, Lovelace, so he made
himself imagine your football was bad. He can always make himself think
what he likes."

"Yes; but it is rather a nuisance," Mansell remarked, "when you realise
it is always House men who have to do the Jekyll and Hyde business."

"Good Lord! Mansell, you are becoming literary," laughed Gordon. "How
did you hear of Jekyll and Hyde?"

"Claremont has been reading the thing on Sunday mornings; not so bad for
a fool like Stevenson. It rather reminded me of _The Doctor's Double_,
by Nat Gould; only, of course, it is not half so good."

"No, that is a fact," said Lovelace. "Nat Gould is the finest author
alive. I read some stuff in a paper the other day about books being true
to life. Well, you could not get anything more true than _The Double
Event_; and race-horsing is the most important thing in life, too. I
sent up the other day for six of his books; they ought to be here
to-morrow."

"Well, for God's sake, don't bring them in here," said Gordon, "there is
enough mess as it is with _The Sportsmans_ of the last month trailing
all over the place."

"Oh, have some sense, man; you don't know what literature is."

Gordon subsided. All his new theories of art collapsed very easily
before the honest Philistinism of Lovelace and Mansell; for he was not
quite sure of his own views himself. He loved poetry, because it seemed
to express his own emotions so adequately. Byron's "Tempest-anger,
Tempest-mirth" was as balm to his rebellious soul. Rebellion was, in
fact, at this time almost a religion with him. Only a few days back he
had discovered Byron's sweeping confession of faith, "I have simplified
my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments," and
he found it a most self-satisfying doctrine. That was what his own life
should be. He would fight against these masters with their
old-fashioned and puritanic notions; he would be the preacher of the new
ideas. It was all very crude, very impossible, but at the back of this
torrid violence lay an honest desire to better conditions, tempered, it
must be owned, with an ambition to fill the middle of the stage himself.
In his imagination he became a second Byron. He saw, or thought he saw,
the mistakes of the system under which he lived; and--without pausing to
consider its merits--wished to sweep away the whole foundation into the
sea, and to build upon some illusory basis a new heaven and new earth.
He had yet to read the essay in which