e could be any other life than
this earth-life. Few people believed him. There are few people who can
believe in a child atheist.

Pierce had a totally different character. He seemed to be more dreamy
and was more energetic, talked much less and accomplished much more. It
had always been his ambition to be a successful diplomat, and in many
respects he was well fitted for a diplomatic career. He had a talent for
languages, great ease of manner, self-possession, patience and cunning.
He loved foreign life. Directly he set foot in a country which was
not his own he felt stimulated. He felt that he woke up, that his mind
became more alert, his imagination more lively. He delighted in change,
in being brought into contact with a society which required study to be
understood. His present fate contented him well enough. He liked Rome
and was liked there. As his mother was a Roman he had many Italian
connections, and he was far more at ease with Romans than with the
average London man. His father and mother lived almost perpetually
in large hotels. The former, who was enormously rich, was a _malade
imaginaire_. He invariably spoke of his quite normal health as if it
were some deadly disease, and always treated himself, and insisted on
being treated, as if he were an exceptionally distinguished invalid.
In the course of years his friends had learned to take his view of the
matter, and he was at this time almost universally spoken of as "that
poor Sir Henry Pierce whose life has been one long martyrdom." Poor
Sir Henry was fortunate in the possession of a wife who really was a
martyr--to him. Nobody had ever discovered whether Lady Pierce knew, or
did not know, that her husband was quite as well as most people. There
are many women with such secrets. Robin's parents were at present taking
baths and drinking waters in Germany. They were later going for an
"after cure" to Switzerland, and then to Italy to "keep warm" during the
autumn. As they never lived in London, Robin had no home there except
his little house in Half Moon Street. He had one brother, renowned as
a polo player, and one sister, who was married to a rising politician,
Lord Evelyn Clowes, a young man with a voluble talent, a peculiar power
of irritating Chancellors of the Exchequer, and hair so thick that he
was adored by the caricaturists.

Robin Pierce and Carey saw little of each other now, being generally
separated by a good many leagues of land and sea, but w