the aesthetic--I was at even greater
pains to cultivate that. I have looked at all the right works of art
in every part of Europe. There was a time when, I venture to believe,
I knew more about Taddeo da Poggibonsi, more about the cryptic Amico
di Taddeo, even than Henry does. To-day, I am happy to say, I have
forgotten most of the knowledge I then so laboriously acquired; but
without vanity I can assert that it was prodigious. I don't pretend, of
course, to know anything about nigger sculpture or the later seventeenth
century in Italy; but about all the periods that were fashionable before
1900 I am, or was, omniscient. Yes, I repeat it, omniscient. But did
that fact make me any more appreciative of art in general? It did not.
Confronted by a picture, of which I could tell you all the known and
presumed history--the date when it was painted, the character of the
painter, the influences that had gone to make it what it was--I felt
none of that strange excitement and exaltation which is, as I am
informed by those who do feel it, the true aesthetic emotion. I felt
nothing but a certain interest in the subject of the picture; or more
often, when the subject was hackneyed and religious, I felt nothing but
a great weariness of spirit. Nevertheless, I must have gone on looking
at pictures for ten years before I would honestly admit to myself that
they merely bored me. Since then I have given up all attempts to take
a holiday. I go on cultivating my old stale daily self in the resigned
spirit with which a bank clerk performs from ten till six his daily
task. A holiday, indeed! I'm sorry for you, Gombauld, if you still look
forward to having a holiday."

Gombauld shrugged his shoulders. "Perhaps," he said, "my standards
aren't as elevated as yours. But personally I found the war quite as
thorough a holiday from all the ordinary decencies and sanities, all the
common emotions and preoccupations, as I ever want to have."

"Yes," Mr. Scogan thoughtfully agreed. "Yes, the war was certainly
something of a holiday. It was a step beyond Southend; it was
Weston-super-Mare; it was almost Ilfracombe."

CHAPTER XXVI.

A little canvas village of tents and booths had sprung up, just beyond
the boundaries of the garden, in the green expanse of the park. A crowd
thronged its streets, the men dressed mostly in black--holiday best,
funeral best--the women in pale muslins. Here and there tricolour
bunting hung inert. In the midst of the