now
what you mean by your allusions to your having fallen off," Paul Overt
observed with pardonable hypocrisy. He liked his companion so much now
that the fact of any decline of talent or of care had ceased for the
moment to be vivid to him.

"Don't say that--don't say that," St. George returned gravely, his head
resting on the top of the sofa-back and his eyes on the ceiling. "You
know perfectly what I mean. I haven't read twenty pages of your book
without seeing that you can't help it."

"You make me very miserable," Paul ecstatically breathed.

"I'm glad of that, for it may serve as a kind of warning. Shocking
enough it must be, especially to a young fresh mind, full of faith--the
spectacle of a man meant for better things sunk at my age in such
dishonour." St. George, in the same contemplative attitude, spoke softly
but deliberately, and without perceptible emotion. His tone indeed
suggested an impersonal lucidity that was practically cruel--cruel to
himself--and made his young friend lay an argumentative hand on his arm.
But he went on while his eyes seemed to follow the graces of the
eighteenth-century ceiling: "Look at me well, take my lesson to heart--for
it _is_ a lesson. Let that good come of it at least that you shudder
with your pitiful impression, and that this may help to keep you straight
in the future. Don't become in your old age what I have in mine--the
depressing, the deplorable illustration of the worship of false gods!"

"What do you mean by your old age?" the young man asked.

"It has made me old. But I like your youth."

Paul answered nothing--they sat for a minute in silence. They heard the
others going on about the governmental majority. Then "What do you mean
by false gods?" he enquired.

His companion had no difficulty whatever in saying, "The idols of the
market; money and luxury and 'the world;' placing one's children and
dressing one's wife; everything that drives one to the short and easy
way. Ah the vile things they make one do!"

"But surely one's right to want to place one's children."

"One has no business to have any children," St. George placidly declared.
"I mean of course if one wants to do anything good."

"But aren't they an inspiration--an incentive?"

"An incentive to damnation, artistically speaking."

"You touch on very deep things--things I should like to discuss with
you," Paul said. "I should like you to tell me volumes about yourself.
This is a