mp fire, sharing their food, and they
were all inimical towards him; that was everything.

He felt the draught. He felt that these men had a down on him; felt it
by all sorts of senses that seemed newly developed. Not a down on him,
Jones, but a down on him, Rochester, Arthur Coningsby Delamere, 21st
Earl of.

And the extraordinary thing was that he felt it. What on earth did it
matter to him if these men looked coldly upon another man? It did. It
mattered quite a lot, more than perhaps it ever mattered to the other
man. Is the soul such a shallow and blind thing that it cannot sort the
true from the false, the material from the immaterial, cannot see that
an insult levelled at a likeness is not an insult levelled at _it_?

Surely not, and yet the soul of Victor Jones resented the coolness of
others towards the supposed body of Rochester, as though it were a
personal insult.

It was the first intimation to Jones that when the actor puts on his
part he puts on more than a cloak or trunk hose, that the personality he
had put on had nerves curiously associated with his own nerves, and
that, though he might say to himself a hundred times with respect to the
attitudes of other people, "Pah! they don't mean me," that formula was
no charm against disdain.

The wine butler, a gentleman not unlike Mr. Church, was now at his
elbow, and he found himself contemplating the wine card of the Senior
Conservative, a serious document, if one may judge by the faces of the
men who peruse it.

It is in fact the Almanach de Gotha of wines. The old kings of wine are
here, the princess and all the aristocracy. Unlike the Almanach de
Gotha, however, the price of each is set down. Unlike the Almanach de
Gotha, the names of a few commoners are admitted.

Macon was here, and even Blackways' Cyder, the favourite tipple of the
old Duke of Taunton.

Jones ran his eye over the list without enthusiasm. He had taken a
dislike to alcohol even in its mildest guise.

"Er--what minerals have you got?" asked he.

"Minerals!"

The man with the wine card was nonplussed. Jones saw his mistake.

"Soda water," said he. "Get me some soda water."

The fillet of sole with sauce Tartare was excellent. Nothing, not even
the minerals could dim that fact. As he ate he looked about him, and
with all the more ease, because he found now that nobody was looking at
him; his self consciousness died down, and he began speculating on the
men around, their proba