HIS," said Eveleth, languidly, turning his head in the valley of silken pillows until he could see the long figure of Aurelian drooping in the Mexican hammock across the big room through the dim strata of blue smoke that, in the silence, lay almost motionless, swirled now and then into subtle curlings and windings as some drowsy smoker breathed more white vapour into the slowly moving and rising tide,—"This is the peace of the land of Proserpina, the faultless content of perfect possession. Philistinism is not without honour, for behold! it has conceived and brought forth—the Decadence."

said Aurelian, softly. "It is only a dream after all, even a dream of the land of endless afternoon. There is lotos mingled with the tobacco, but we wake easily."

A deeper voice came from a motionless figure prone on a tiger skin before the crumbling fire. "Opium and Burgundy are not faultless substitutes for the true lotos after all, but—they do very well—for the time."

Murmurs of inarticulate assent rose and faded in the opium-heavy air, and then the smoke grew still again. Now and then a bit of wood fell in the fireplace. Aurelian's narghileh gurgled and sighed in slow cadence. These things were only a modulation of the silence.

The room was vast and dim, seemingly without bounds, save on that side where the violet flames of a drift-wood fire flickered quiveringly, making a centre, a concentration of dull light; for the rest, a mysterious wilderness of rugs and divans, Indian chairs and hammocks, where silent figures lay darkly, each a primal cause of one of the many thin streams of smoke that curled heavily upward;—smoke from strange and curious pipes from Lahore and Gualior; small sensitive pipes from Japan; here and there the short thick stems of opium-pipes, and by the motionless Mexican hammock a splendid and wonderful hookah with writhing stem. As the thin flames of the dying fire flashed into some sudden brightness, they revealed details unseen in the general gloom,—a vast and precious missal gorgeous with scarlet and gold and purple illumination, open, on a carved oak lectern, spoil of some Spanish monastery; the golden gloom of a Giovanni Bellini reft from its home in Venice, and as yet unransomed; the glint of twisted and gilded glass in an ebony cabinet; great folios and quartos in ancient bindings of vellum and ivory and old calf-skin, heavily tooled with gold, and with silver and jewelled medallions and clasps, stacked in heaps in careless indifference; the flash and sparkle of a cabinet of gems, the red splendour of old lacquer; the green mystery of wrought jade. And everywhere a heavy atmosphere that lay on the chest like a strange yet desirable dream; the warm, sick odour of tobacco and opium, striving with the perfume of sandal-wood, and of roses that drooped and fluttered in pieces in the hot air.

Around a brazier of green bronze, on the floor, before the fire, lay the three men who were gently breathing in the bland opium, their dark figures radiating from the queer brazier wrought of two ugly dragons chasing each other around a great globe of Japanese chrystal, the firelight gleaming on the tall glasses of champagne where the little column of gold bubbles rose steadily. The fire fell together, and a leaping flame cast a fitful light on heavy tapestry curtains wrought with the story of the loves of Cupid and Psyche. Its two halves parted slowly, and a flush of red light fell through as, in the midst, appeared a dark figure with closed eyes, swaying softly as it leaned forward, and, while the curtains closed, fell with a long sweep gently toward the brazier,—not as men fall, but as a snake with its head lifted high might advance slidingly, and as it came, droop lower and lower until it rested prone on the uncrushed flowers. So Enderby, heavy with the suave sleep of haschish, came among the smokers and dropped motionless in the midst of the cushions. The movement set a tall glass quivering until it fell to one side, and the yellow wine sank slowly into the silky fur of a leopard skin.

Aurelian lifted his hand to a gold cord that hung over the hammock. Presently a slim girl with flesh like firelight on ivory, clad in translucent silk of a dusky purple that made no sound as she came, appeared in the darkness of the farther doorway. She came to the hammock where Aurelian was lying.

"Will the honourable master be served with the august sakÉ?" she asked with a voice that was like the fluttering of cherry blossoms in Yoshiwara.

"No, O Shiratsuyu," said Aurelian, drawing the slim figure toward him, kissing the scarlet mouth that drooped above as he lay full length, looking sleepily upward. "No, O Shiratsuyu, but fill the glasses of the honourable guests with the wine, there on the table."

The girl glided among the drowsy figures, filling the glasses. As she knelt by the brazier to lift the overturned glass, her slim fingers lingered; a head turned sleepily, and, as the lips fell on the little hand, kissed it softly.

At a movement of Aurelian's eyes the girl vanished.

Eveleth half rose to look after her with delight. "Where did you find that bauble, Aurelian?" he said.

Aurelian neither moved nor opened his eyes as he replied, "In Kioto."

"She is more precious than your Delhi topaz."

"She cost me more."

"What is she called?"

"The Honourable White Dew."

"I have never seen her before."

"Nor any other than myself."

"I think she is a dream."

"No, only part of a dream."

"How long will the dream last?"

"Until dawn."

"What is the dawn?"

"Death."

The word roused ungracious thoughts in Eveleth, and he turned his face to the wall, falling into a half dream. When next he looked toward his host it was at the instigation of low voices. A servant was standing by the hammock,—not the mysterious Japanese girl, but a black boy in a red fez. Aurelian looked toward Eveleth sleepily.

"One is without and craves entrance," said he. "What shall I say to him? He has come as my guest; shall I receive him here?"

"Is he an 'Elect'?"

"No, he is not an 'Elect.'"

"A Philistine then."

"Neither a Philistine, wholly."

"What then?"

"A product of Philistinism, an Agitator."

Eveleth looked vaguely around over the silent room,—at Wentworth, throned in a stately chair of mahogany and brass that had belonged to the great Napoleon, still crowned with the garland of gold bay leaves he had placed on his head after dinner, half in defiance, half in jest, now sleeping, his chibouk lying between his knees; at the abandoned figures motionless about the bronze brazier; at Aurelian, clothed gloriously in a sleeveless gaberdine of blood-red silk over a white crÊpe kimono heavy with embroidery; at his own figure half wrapped in a big mantle of rose-coloured damask. And everywhere the stillness of Oriental sleep. As he looked he said dubiously, "An agitator? Do you think an agitator would do—here? Isn't there rather too much to agitate?"

"Yes, and for that reason I will let him come; as it is, this is almost stagnation. He will amuse me, I feel,—I feel, that in a little while, I—might be bored."

Eveleth sank back resignedly and not without curiosity. Aurelian nodded, and the servant glided away.

---

"Hello, Aurelian!"

The words were like a stone dashed in the midst of a pool of brown water, still, under willows. Wentworth, looking like a Napoleonic revenant, shivered into wakefulness; Eveleth sat bolt upright with a start; even the opium-smokers, all but Enderby, turned their heavy heads, wakened from mysterious dreams.

The new-comer stopped in the door and stared,—stared mightily. He coughed and blinked in the smoky air. It was the clash of East and West, of a fictitious, exotic East, of a commonplace, hard-headed, practical West.

"Where are you?" McCann cried loudly, making his way through the twilight toward the sound of Aurelian's voice.

"I'm glad to see you at last," he said doubtfully, "but I'm not quite used to this sort of thing, you know; I feel as though I had drank too much." His eyes fell on the confused heap of drowsy humanity around the brazier. "Aurelian," he said sternly, "is this a 'joint' I have happened on?"

"It is my house," said Aurelian, in his gentle voice, "wherein I have the honour to count you for the moment a guest."

"I beg pardon," grimly; "but as I said, you must remember I am not familiar with this sort of thing. I think I had better wait until you are less busily engaged."

"My dear fellow, I am never busily engaged, and I am never more idle than now. You will stay, of course. Will you smoke?—I mean tobacco. I think you smoke narghilehs; shall Murad come and light you one?"

"Thanks, by your leave I will smoke my own," and McCann pulled out his brier bull-dog, filled it from his own pouch, and sat down constrainedly, his eyes fixed on the four men in their motley costumes, strewn on the floor.

At once Aurelian began to talk to him frankly and freely, as though nothing had changed since last master and pupil had spoken together, questioning him of his adventures in England and Germany while on his mission among the socialist leaders. McCann noted with surprise and with a feeling almost of reassurance that no detail of recent sociological events had escaped Aurelian; that he listened with equal interest to all that he told him; that he showed keen satisfaction at the outcome of two or three recent strikes in which the strikers had been victorious. But all the time the agitator's eyes were wandering over the dimly visible details of the strange treasure-house where he found himself. He looked on it all with growing resentment; it was hardly to be called socialistic, and there seemed to be a lack of harmony between these luxurious surroundings and the words that Aurelian was saying. There was something awfully wrong; but he shrunk from knowing what he feared to be the worst.

After the first convulsion which his entrance had caused, the different men had all fallen back languidly in their places; but now Wentworth lifted himself lazily and came down toward Aurelian and the agitator. "Well, citoyen," he said, nothing abashed by his fantastic garb, which was far enough from being the same in which he generally met McCann, "Well, citoyen, you come as a visitant from another world, like the black steamers that crawl into the balmy vision known to the children of men as Venice,—in it, not of it. Can you bring a tale of the things without? Is there anything worthy of note in Philistia? How fare our friends the republics of the world, there in the outer darkness?"

"Oh," said McCann, with indifference, "there is another revolution on down in Guatemala, and one expected daily in Brazil, and one in the French Republic—"

"And the smoke not yet cleared away from the last revolution in Brazil, nor yet from the last in Chile, nor yet from the last in Honduras; wars in half the republics in South and Central America, rumours of wars in Mexico and all the rest; the French Republic counting the days that already are numbered by its dupes at length undeceived,—I know the whole grotesque story, and yet people talk about popular sovereignty and republics. And you yourselves, McCann, bon citoyen, you agitators and socialists, hug to yourselves the vain phantom of popular government. You ought to know better, for you know something of sociology if you are sweetly ignorant on politics. What was that Balzac said, Aurelian? Tell me."

"About popular government, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Why, he called it the only government that is irresponsible and whose tyranny will be unchecked because exercised under the name of law."

"Ah, this is it! Isn't that exact? 'A bas la RÉpublique,' the King shall come to his own again!" and he sung the words gaily to a fragment of an old Jacobite air. "Don't interrupt me, Aurelian, the spirit is on me and I must confound this blind leader." His tone changed and he put his hand on McCann's shoulder. "Malcolm, you know as we all know here that the present condition of this happy world is very like the Puritan idea of hell. You know, also, that the preserving factor, if not the original cause of this pleasant state of affairs, is the modern theory of economics and its resulting industrial and commercial systems. Now, what do you propose to substitute in place of this gigantic abortion, this debauching incubus?"

"State Socialism."

"Exactly! Out of your own mouth have you condemned yourself. Man, man! what would your State Socialism be in the hands of such a State as we have now? In Chile? In Mexico? In any ring-ruled mob-ruled State in this unhealthy republic? Why, simply the biggest and most wholesale 'job,' the most arrant corruption, the most awful and omnipotent succubus that ever waxed fat on the blood of a dying nation. Malcolm, you and your ilk have made a dreary mistake; you think only of industrial reforms, while to make these of effect you must first have a political reform which will be in itself a revolution. Destroy the present system, build up an honourable State, and then it will be time to talk of State Socialism."

McCann had chafed furiously under this tirade, and as Wentworth threw himself down in a low chair, lighting his Dimitrino cigarette at the flames of the brazier, he burst out violently: "You are all wrong, you don't know what you are talking about when you say we don't want a political reform! We do, a radical reform."

Wentworth's eyes gleamed amusedly through the rings of white smoke as he said quietly, "How?"

"I would destroy the whole system of party and ring rule."

Wentworth smiled disdainfully. "My dear Malcolm," he said, blowing an ash from his cigarette, "I spare you the humiliation of trying to tell me how. Do you not realise that party and ring rule are the necessary results of three of your dearest idols?—idols that you would defend, I believe, with your life. They are these: Manhood suffrage, rotation in office, and representative government. Until you are content to destroy these in your political revolution your attempts to abolish ring and partisan rule will fail."

"They will not fail, for we shall abolish those abuses through making the control of the people over their representatives more absolute and direct."

"The exact contrary of the result you hope for would follow from the course you suggest. I can't convince you of that now; grant the truth of your position for a moment, what would follow? You would simply substitute for the repulsive rule of the 'bosses' a dreary and fleeting government of emancipated slaves. We have seen the result of that in the South, where we made fatal error in giving the black slaves a measure of political power. You would do the same by giving the white slaves all political power. I say, emancipate them,—and govern them."

"By whom?"

"Their King and their peers."

"Where will you find them in this country?"

"Choose them."

"By whom?"

"The people."

"Aha! Then you lose your point."

"By no means, for the franchise should be a privilege, not a right, and while the people should choose, only their leaders should govern."

"You are a monarchist!"

"Yes."

"Then you are a reactionist, an aristocrat; no socialist!"

"I am a monarchist and a vehement socialist."

"That is a paradox."

"So are most final truths, since a paradox is only a concise statement of the colour on each side of the shield; you remember the fable?"

"Then you mean to say that socialism and monarchism do not negative each other?"

"No more than the silver of one side of the shield negatives the gold of the other."

"You are a vain theorist!"

"It is you who are a vain theorist; my position is based on history. I know the record of the attempts to put the visionary theory of popular government into practice."

"We have never had a true popular government yet."

"I agree with you; but we have had true princes."

"Where?"

For answer Wentworth turned his head a little and raised his eyes toward a great picture hanging in the shadow. McCann followed his glance, and found himself looking at the sad face with the mournful eyes of Vandyke's portrait of King Charles I. of England. Curtains of old purple velvet wrought with Bourbon lilies of tarnished gold hung on either side, and from their midst the King seemed looking on them as in a vision. The picture annoyed McCann; it was the presentment of a King, a tyrant; he scowled at it ill-naturedly.

"You keep that there because it is a good picture, I suppose," he said, turning to Aurelian, who had been listening silently.

"Because it is a copy of a good picture of a glorious King," replied Aurelian.

"A good King!"

"A glorious King and most noble man."

"You talk like a Jacobite."

"I am a Jacobite."

McCann took his pipe out of his mouth. "What do you talk like that for? You used to be a socialist."

"I am still a socialist."

"Are you bedevilled with Wentworth's theory that a man can be both a socialist and a royalist?"

"Certainly."

"How do you justify such nonsense?"

"By regarding both sides of the shield."

"I deny that socialism is one side of a shield, the other side of which is monarchism."

"Then you should study history more carefully," interrupted Wentworth.

"Will history prove to me that monarchism is not and has not been from the first the bitter enemy of the people?" cried the agitator, derisively, flashing his eyes savagely on the languid Wentworth.

"That is exactly what it will prove," returned his tormentor, sweetly.

"Well, I have studied history for twenty years, and it has taught me exactly the reverse."

"Histories, you mean; but you must remember that there is very little history in histories."

McCann gasped in impotent rage, but Aurelian interposed with his low voice. "You will reach nothing by such argument, my children. You are both visionaries,—you, Malcolm, who dream of ideal, impossible republics surrounded by the tottering ruins of your fantastic fabrics, builded on the shifting sand of popular fancies; you, Strafford Wentworth, dear dupe of futile hopes, vainly watching for the King to come to his own again. Dreamers both of you! I alone am the practical man; I wait for that which the gods may give. In the mean time I stand with the 'divine Plato,' aside, under the wall, while the storm of dust goes by. Forsake your forlorn hope, Malcolm; stand to one side with me, and wait. And in the mean time"—he lifted a strange Japanese viol—"in the mean time, sing, and forget the imminent night. Malcolm, there is beauty still left, and a little art; it will last us through the twilight."

"Art will not quiet my conscience, nor blind my eyes to the sight of rotting slaves and foul fat drivers."

"You take things too seriously!" cried Wentworth, biting the heavy leaves one by one from a drooping rose. "It is like putting new wine into old bottles to try to pour seriousness into this decrepit and degenerate age."

McCann laughed aloud. "I accept the omen; for the bottles, if I remember aright, were burst!"

"And you will spill your wine."

"The type of blood; and the blood of martyrs is the seed of the new Commonwealth!"

"But why not take new bottles and save your precious wine?"

"We have none, and the old are at hand."

"They are rotting fast."

"The world cannot wait,—mothers and children starve every day."

"If you die for them it is only a life for a life, and the guilty thrive."

"Some will go down with us to hades!"

Aurelian laughed softly, and rambled vaguely on over the strings of his samosen, making strange music. "Now we will quarrel no more, for we are where we began. Malcolm, if you must go to your death, Vale, I will offer a kid and honey on the altar of Mnemosyne. Go your ways, and leave me to mine; I am aweary of this servile and perishing world, rheumy and gibbering. Here I have my books of the Elect, my fading pictures, my treasures of dead civilisation. This is my monastery, like those of the old Faith that, during the night that came down on the world after the ruin of Rome, treasured as in an ark the seeds of the new life. Here I can gather my Children of Light and bar my doors against the Philistines without, among whom, dear Malcolm, force me not yet to number you. Be lenient with me, accept my hospitality; it will strengthen you for your fight with the windmill that forces the wind of God to grind men and women like grain. In the mean time, it is still the youth of the night, so I will give you more wine—or your favourite beer if you like; I have some good Bavarian. Those four decadents and the poor agnostic there on the floor are happy. I never take the black smoke myself, nor any of you: wise, all of you, but God forbid that I should refuse any guest of mine aught! They, sleeping in opium-dreams, have chosen their way. We will choose another for ourselves."

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