y trivial
noise that was the exact antithesis; and they heard some six streets below
a newsboy calling, and a bell bidding to chapel. They could also hear
talk out of the garden below; and realized that the irrepressible Smith
must have followed Gould downstairs, for his eager and pleading accents
could be heard, followed by the half-humourous protests of Miss Duke
and the full and very youthful laughter of Rosamund Hunt. The air had
that cold kindness that comes after a storm. Michael Moon drank it in with
as serious a relish as he had drunk the little bottle of cheap claret,
which he had emptied almost at a draught. Inglewood went on eating ginger
very slowly and with a solemnity unfathomable as the sky above him.
There was still enough stir in the freshness of the atmosphere to make them
almost fancy they could smell the garden soil and the last roses of autumn.
Suddenly there came from the darkening room a silvery ping and pong which
told them that Rosamund had brought out the long-neglected mandoline.
After the first few notes there was more of the distant bell-like laughter.

"Inglewood," said Michael Moon, "have you ever heard that I
am a blackguard?"

"I haven't heard it, and I don't believe it," answered Inglewood,
after an odd pause. "But I have heard you were--what they
call rather wild."

"If you have heard that I am wild, you can contradict the rumour,"
said Moon, with an extraordinary calm; "I am tame.
I am quite tame; I am about the tamest beast that crawls.
I drink too much of the same kind of whisky at the same time
every night. I even drink about the same amount too much.
I go to the same number of public-houses. I meet the same damned
women with mauve faces. I hear the same number of dirty stories--
generally the same dirty stories. You may assure my friends,
Inglewood, that you see before you a person whom civilization
has thoroughly tamed."

Arthur Inglewood was staring with feelings that made him nearly
fall off the roof, for indeed the Irishman's face, always sinister,
was now almost demoniacal.

"Christ confound it!" cried out Moon, suddenly clutching the empty
claret bottle, "this is about the thinnest and filthiest wine
I ever uncorked, and it's the only drink I have really enjoyed
for nine years. I was never wild until just ten minutes ago."
And he sent the bottle whizzing, a wheel of glass, far away beyond
the garden into the road, where, in the profound evening silence,
they