out.

"She is always conscious of herself in every situation, in every
relation of life. While she loves even she thinks to herself, 'How
beautifully I am loving!' And she never forgets for a single moment
that she is a fascinating woman. If she were being murdered she would be
saying silently, while the knife went in, 'What an attractive creature,
what an unreplaceable personage they are putting an end to!'"

"Rupert, you are really too absurd!" exclaimed Pierce, laughing
reluctantly.

"I'm not absurd. I see straight. Lady Holme is an egoist--a magnificent,
an adorable egoist, fine enough in her brilliant selfishness to stand
quite alone."

"And you mean to tell us that any woman can do that?" exclaimed Pierce.

"Who am I that I should pronounce a verdict upon the great mystery? What
do I know of women?"

"Far too much, I'm afraid," said Pierce.

"Nothing, I have never been married, and only the married man knows
anything of women. The Frenchmen are wrong. It is not the mistress who
informs, it is the loving wife. For me the sex remains mysterious, like
the heroine of my realm of dreams."

"You are talking great nonsense, Rupert."

"I always do when I am depressed, and I am very specially depressed
to-night."

"But why? There must be some very special reason."

"There is. I, too, dined out and met at dinner a young man whose one
desire in life appears to be to deprive living creatures of life."

Sir Donald moved slightly.

"You're not a sportsman, then, Mr. Carey?" he said.

"Indeed, I am. I've shot big game, the Lord forgive me, and found big
pleasure in doing it. Yet this young man depressed me. He was so robust,
so perfectly happy, so supremely self-satisfied, and, according to his
own account, so enormously destructive, that he made me feel very sick.
He is married. He married a widow who has an ear-trumpet and a big
shooting in Scotland. If she could be induced to crawl in underwood, or
stand on a cairn against a skyline, I'm sure he'd pot at her for the fun
of the thing."

"What is his name?" asked Sir Donald.

"I didn't catch it. My host called him Leo. He has--"

"Ah! He is my only son."

Pierce looked very uncomfortable, but Carey replied calmly:

"Really. I wonder he hasn't shot you long ago."

Sir Donald smiled.

"Doesn't he depress you?" added Carey.

"He does, I'm sorry to say, but scarcely so much as I depress him."

"I think Lady Holme would like him."

For once Sir Donald