ot. I won't stand it. It's all a
confounded fraud. There's no joke in those infernal tales at all. You
know there isn't as well as I do."

"Well," replied Quin, slowly, "it is true that I, with my rather
gradual mental processes, did not see any joke in them. But the finer
sense of Barker perceived it."

Barker turned a fierce red, but continued to stare at the horizon.

"You ass," said Lambert; "why can't you be like other people? Why
can't you say something really funny, or hold your tongue? The man who
sits on his hat in a pantomime is a long sight funnier than you are."

Quin regarded him steadily. They had reached the top of the ridge and
the wind struck their faces.

"Lambert," said Auberon, "you are a great and good man, though I'm
hanged if you look it. You are more. You are a great revolutionist or
deliverer of the world, and I look forward to seeing you carved in
marble between Luther and Danton, if possible in your present
attitude, the hat slightly on one side. I said as I came up the hill
that the new humour was the last of the religions. You have made it
the last of the superstitions. But let me give you a very serious
warning. Be careful how you ask me to do anything _outre_, to imitate
the man in the pantomime, and to sit on my hat. Because I am a man
whose soul has been emptied of all pleasures but folly. And for
twopence I'd do it."

"Do it, then," said Lambert, swinging his stick impatiently. "It would
be funnier than the bosh you and Barker talk."

Quin, standing on the top of the hill, stretched his hand out towards
the main avenue of Kensington Gardens.

"Two hundred yards away," he said, "are all your fashionable
acquaintances with nothing on earth to do but to stare at each other
and at us. We are standing upon an elevation under the open sky, a
peak as it were of fantasy, a Sinai of humour. We are in a great
pulpit or platform, lit up with sunlight, and half London can see us.
Be careful how you suggest things to me. For there is in me a madness
which goes beyond martyrdom, the madness of an utterly idle man."

"I don't know what you are talking about," said Lambert,
contemptuously. "I only know I'd rather you stood on your silly head,
than talked so much."

"Auberon! for goodness' sake ..." cried Barker, springing forward; but
he was too late. Faces from all the benches and avenues were turned in
their direction. Groups stopped and small crowds collected; and the
sharp sunlight pic