en
identified with King Auberon. "All right, my dear chap," he said to
G., who was trying to apologize. "Mr. Lane and I settled it all at a
lunch." I think he was a little put out at finding no red carpet put
down for his royal feet and we had quite a discussion as to whether
he ought to precede me into the dining room. Graham Robertson was on
my left. He was jolly too, kept on producing wonderful rings and
stones out of his pockets. He said he wished he could go about
covered in the pieces of a chandelier. The other guests were lady
Seton, Mrs. W. K. Clifford, Mr. W. W. Howells and his daughter (too
Burne-Jonesy to be really attractive), Mr. Taylor (police
magistrate), and Mrs. Eichholz (Mrs. Lane's mother) who is more
beautiful than anything except a wee baby. In fact, she looks exactly
like one, so dainty and small. She can never at any time have been as
pretty as she is now.

Gilbert and Max and I drove to his house (Max's), where he basely
enticed us in. He gave me fearful preserved fruits which ruined my
dress--but he made himself very entertaining. Home 1.30.

Caring for nothing in the world but a joke, King Auberon decrees that
the dull and respectable London boroughs shall be given city guards
in resplendent armour, each borough to have its own coat of arms, its
city walls, tocsin, and the like. The idea is taken seriously by the
second hero, Adam Wayne of Notting Hill, an enthusiast utterly
lacking any sense of humour, who goes to war with the other boroughs
of London to protect a small street which they have designed to pull
down in the interests of commercial development. Pimlico, Kensington
and the rest attack Notting Hill. Men bleed and die in the contest
and by the magic of the sword the old ideas of local patriotism and
beauty in civic life return to England. The conventional politician,
Barker, who begins the story in a frock-coat and irreproachable silk
hat, ends it clad in purple and gold.

When Notting Hill, become imperial minded, goes down to destruction
in a sea of blood, Auberon Quin confesses to Wayne that this whole
story, so full of human tragedy and hopes and fears, had been merely
the outcome of a joke. To him all life was a joke, to Wayne an epic;
and this antagonism between the humorist and the fanatic has created
the whole wild story. Wayne has the last word:

"I know of something that will alter that antagonism, something
that