ion, he was wont to describe
himself with engaging candour as a "bad hat." In doing so he recognised
that he was a dependent part of a vast and complicated system. If he,
Vincent Hardy, was a bad hat, who was to blame for it? Obviously,
civilisation for providing him with temptation, and society for
supplying encouragement. As a consequence he owed both civilisation and
society a grudge.

"Therefore I say that a return to barbarism will be our salvation. You
and I mayn't live to see the day, but----"

Here the impassioned orator, who had been making charges at his boots
with the point of his walking-stick, succeeded in detaching a large
cake of mud, which he immediately ground to powder on the carpet.
Civilisation personified in Audrey Craven gazed at him in polite
reproach.

"My new carpet will certainly not live to see it. It may be part of the
detestable social order, but it is not responsible for it, any more than
I am."

"Never mind, Audrey. It's honest Hertfordshire mud--clean from the
country as God made it, if I hadn't had to cross your filthy London in
order to get here."

Audrey smiled, though she knew that brown streaks of the honest
Hertfordshire mud marked the hero's passage from the doorway to her
feet. She was naturally long-suffering, and seldom repulsed any one,
save a few of the more impertinent of her own sex. She lay back in her
cosy corner, outwardly contemplating the unusual length of muscular
humanity extended before her, inwardly admiring her own smile, a smile
of indulgent lips and arch eyebrows, in which the eyes preserved a
languid neutrality.

Being thus pleasantly preoccupied, she may be supposed ignorant of her
cousin's broad gaze of unreflecting admiration, and totally unprepared
for his rapid change of theme.

"Audrey," he began, with alarming suddenness, "some people would lead up
to the subject cautiously. That would only waste time, and time's
everything now. Is Miss Craven at home?"

"Miss Craven is always at home when I am. Would you like to see her?"

"See her? Good heavens, no! Do you know positively where she is
secreting herself, or must I lock the door?"

"That is unnecessary. She will not come in--she never does."

A suspicious look darted from the corners of Hardy's eyes.

"Except when I ask her," added Audrey, sweetly.

"Well, then, if you can ensure me against the sort of interruption that
annoyed me before, we will return to the question we were discussing