jective. Nothing
exists except in our point of view. So we are continually making and
marring our own lives and the lives of other people by a word, an
action, a thought."

"Dear me!" Lady Caroom murmured. "How-ever shall I be able to play
bridge after tea if you all try to addle my brain by paradoxes and
subtle sayings beforehand! What does Arranmore mean?"

He put down his cup.

"Do not dare to understand me," he said. "It is the most sincere
unkindness when one talks only to answer. And as for bridge--remember
that this is a night of mourning. Bridge is far too frivolous a
pursuit."

"Bridge a frivolous pursuit?" Sybil exclaimed. "Heavens, what
sacrilege. What ought we to do, Lord Arranmore?"

"Sit in sackcloth and ashes, and hear Brooks lecture on the poor," he
answered, lightly. "Brooks is a mixture of the sentimentalist and the
hideous pessimist, you know, and it is the privilege of his years to be
sometimes in earnest. I know nothing more depressing than to listen to
a man who is in earnest."

"You are getting positively light-headed," Sybil laughed. "I can see no
pleasure in life save that which comes from an earnest pursuit of
things, good or evil."

"My dear child," Lord Arranmore answered, "when you are a little older
you will know that to take life seriously is a sheer impossibility. You
may think that you are doing it, but you are not."

"There must be exceptions," Sybil declared.

"There are none," Lord Arranmore answered, lightly, "outside the
madhouse. For the realization of life comes only hand in hand with
insanity. The people who have come nearest to it carry the mark with
them all their life. For the fever of knowledge will scorch even those
who peer over the sides of the cauldron."

Lady Caroom helped herself to some more tea.

"Really, Arranmore," she drawled, "for sheer and unadulterated pessimism
you are unsurpassed. You must be a very morbid person."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"One is always called morbid," he remarked, "who dares to look towards
the truth."

"There are people," Lady Caroom answered, "who look always towards the
clouds, even when the sun is shining."

"I am in the minority," Lord Arranmore said, smiling. "I feel myself
becoming isolated. Let us abandon the subject."

"No, let us convert you instead," Sybil declared. "We want to look at
the sun, and we want to take you with us. You are really a very stupid
person, you know. Why do you want to stay all alon