that the spirit of the club was safest with persons of
this class guided them in their elections, and eldest sons, who became
members almost as a matter of course, lost no time in putting up their
younger brothers, thereby keeping the wine as pure as might be, and
preserving that fine old country-house flavour which is nowhere so
appreciated as in London.

After seeing Gregory pass on the top of a bus, George Pendyce went into
the card-room, and as it was still empty, set to contemplation of the
pictures on the walls. They were effigies of all those members of
the Stoics' Club who from time to time had come under the notice of a
celebrated caricaturist in a celebrated society paper. Whenever a Stoic
appeared, he was at once cut out, framed, glassed, and hung alongside
his fellows in this room. And George moved from one to another till he
came to the last. It was himself. He was represented in very perfectly
cut clothes, with slightly crooked elbows, and race-glasses slung across
him. His head, disproportionately large, was surmounted by a black
billycock hat with a very flat brim. The artist had thought long and
carefully over the face. The lips and cheeks and chin were moulded so as
to convey a feeling of the unimaginative joy of life, but to their shape
and complexion was imparted a suggestion of obstinacy and choler. To
the eyes was given a glazed look, and between them set a little line, as
though their owner were thinking:

'Hard work, hard work! Noblesse oblige. I must keep it going!'

Underneath was written: "The Ambler."

George stood long looking at the apotheosis of his fame. His star was
high in the heavens. With the eye of his mind he saw a long procession
of turf triumphs, a long vista of days and nights, and in them, round
them, of them--Helen Bellow; and by an odd coincidence, as he stood
there, the artist's glazed look came over his eyes, the little line
sprang up between them.

He turned at the sound of voices and sank into a chair. To have been
caught thus gazing at himself would have jarred on his sense of what was
right.

It was twenty minutes past seven, when, in evening dress, he left the
club, and took a shilling's-worth to Buckingham Gate. Here he dismissed
his cab, and turned up the large fur collar of his coat. Between the
brim of his opera-hat and the edge of that collar nothing but his eyes
were visible. He waited, compressing his lips, scrutinising each hansom
that went by. In the sof