Lord Henry felt he had done his best for England, and now his mind turned covetously towards a country and a clime where his best promised to yield richer and better fruit. He had mended society's nervous wrecks so long that he had come to look upon the whole modern world as a machine too hopelessly out of gear to repay his skilful efforts.

"People who never sit down to a meal with an appetite," he would say, "people whose bodies are as surcharged as their houses with superfluous loot, cannot hope to be well, physically or spiritually. We live on an island huddled together, and yet we grow every day further apart. For the acquisition of superfluous loot means incessant strife. The worst sign of the times is that abstract terms no longer mean the same thing to any two people. Individualism is thus destroying even the value of language. Because where each man has his individual view a common language itself becomes an impossibility. The effort of the Middle Ages was to convert Europe into a single nation. The effort of the modern or 'Muddle' Age, is to convert each single nation into a Europe. That is why abstract terms are slowly losing their value as the current coin of speech."

St. Maur had attached himself to Lord Henry as a kind of voluntary or honorary secretary. He assisted his master where and when he could, and felt that he was more than adequately repaid in the enormous amount he learnt from him.

"Is there no remedy?" he demanded seriously on a day early in August, when the prospect of losing his friend was weighing more heavily than usual upon him. The two were sitting talking in the study of Lord Henry's cottage which stood in a lane off the London road, about two miles north of Ashbury, where his sanatorium was situated.

"There is a remedy, of course," replied Lord Henry. "It would consist in uniting modern nations afresh by means of a powerful common culture. It is only then that men can be guided and led, for it is only then that they can understand what they are taught about life and humanity. In the Middle Ages a common culture was so universal, that even the barriers of nationality did not prevent men from understanding one another. Now there is such a total lack of a uniform culture that men of the same nation speak an unknown tongue to one another. That is the recipe for stupidity."

"But cannot this new uniform culture be created?" St. Maur insisted.

"It would mean a great new religion," Lord Henry answered. "And we are all too much exhausted for such a stupendous undertaking. New religions depend in the first place upon the belief in great men, and where are the great men of to-day? Only those whose coarse impudence has made them forget their limitations start new religions nowadays. And look at the result!"

"There are enough of them at all events," suggested St. Maur.

"Exactly,—their number is the best comment on their futility."

"But surely the effort, general as it is, shows that people agree with you, and feel the need that you see and recognise?"

"Yes, but the arrogance with which they pretend to supply the need themselves, is the best proof of how deeply they misunderstand the gravity of their plight. Look at these Theosophists, Spiritualists, and members of the Inner Light,—mere cliques, mere handfuls of uninspired and uninspiring cranks. They'll never spread a uniform and unifying culture. They cannot therefore make language once more a common currency for thought."

Aubrey St. Maur had endeared himself to Lord Henry chiefly by the inordinate beauty of his person, his exuberant health, and his modesty. He was wealthy and the only son of a wealthy father. All the "loot" of the de Porvilliers had come to him through his mother, and to Lord Henry's surprise had failed to turn his head. On the contrary, it had if anything filled him with a feeling of guilt, or perhaps that which is most akin to guilt—obligation. And he had long wondered how best he could discharge this obligation to the world. In Lord Henry's company he had elected to find a solution to this problem.

But Lord Henry did not want the youth to join him on his journey to China. The love the young nobleman still felt for his native country bade him leave this promising member of it, if only as a forlorn hope, to prove to Englishmen that here and there, at ever more distant intervals, their blood was still capable of producing something that was eminently desirable.

"You will succeed your father in the Upper House," he said to St. Maur on this occasion, when the latter expressed the desire to become a pious mandarin, "and you will, I trust, be an example of health and wisdom to all. The faith in blood and lineage wants people like you. There is so precious little to which it can be pinned nowadays."

"That's all very well," protested St. Maur. "But you are deserting the battlefield, and leaving an unfledged pupil in charge. Is this nothing to you? Are you incapable of becoming attached to anybody? Without fishing for compliments, is it nothing to you to break our friendship in this way?"

Lord Henry, who as usual was curling his mesh of hair with his fingers, cast a sidelong glance full of meaning at his friend and smiled.

"My dear boy, if it hadn't been for you," he said, "I should not be here now. Do you suppose it amuses me to investigate the unsavoury details of every society lady's nervous affliction? Do you suppose I'm flattered by such and such a Guardsman's encomiums when I have cured his stammer, or his inability to proceed beyond the letter 'P' when writing a letter?"

"What is your real purpose in going to China?" persisted the younger man. "I shan't divulge. Can't you tell me?"

"In the first place, my dear boy," Lord Henry replied, "curiosity. I honestly want to see how Chinamen have escaped the madness that is overtaking Europe. Secondly, I have a heart, and I love my country, and I cannot witness my country's decline. Thirdly, and chiefly,—but this is a secret,—I feel that now it is the duty of all enlightened Western Europeans, who have seen the madness of European civilisation, to hasten to the last healthy spot on earth and to preach the Gospel of Europophobia,—that is to say, to warn the wise East against our criminal errors, and to save it from becoming infected by our diseases. If the world is to be saved, a cordon sanitaire must be established round Europe and everything like Europe; for Europe has now become a pestilence."

St. Maur who had been standing at the window with his back turned to his friend swung suddenly round, his face illumined as if by an inspiration.

"By Jove," he cried, "that is an idea! That is indeed a crusade! I hadn't thought of that!"

"It is the only beneficent direction in which I feel I can use my powers," said Lord Henry gravely. "It is, if you will, my religion. I feel I am called to be a missionary to the East, to preach the solemn warning against Western civilisation."

"God!" St. Maur exclaimed, "that's an idea with which to fire a generation. It is a new gospel; a new gospel of sin and the Devil."

"I assure you," Lord Henry rejoined, "the bulk of the men at my club would not turn a hair at the suggestion. They would simply turn their papers over, nod significantly at each other, and whisper, 'The fellow's not all there.'"

At this moment Lord Henry's man, Fordham, entered the room.

"Yes?" his master grunted from the depths of his chair.

"A lady to see you, my lord," replied the man.

"I'm out."

"That's what I said, my lord."

"Well?"

"The lady said that was all nonsense; she 'ad called at the Sanatorium, and they'd said you was 'ere."

"Then her name's Delarayne," said Lord Henry.

"Yes, that's it, my lord."

"Very well, then, show her up."

"That woman's a wonder," St. Maur exclaimed. "It is a boiling hot day; at any moment there may be a storm; there was probably no fly at the station,—there never is when I come,—and she must have walked the whole of the two miles in the dust. She has an eye on you, my friend."

"Yes," said Lord Henry, "and by the time a woman has her eye on you, she usually has her claws in you as well. You needn't go," he added, as he noticed St. Maur preparing to leave. "But she's an admirable woman. Good taste amounts almost to heroism in these women who battle with age until their very last breath."

Mrs. Delarayne, if anything more regal and more youthful than ever, but certainly showing signs of having taken violent exercise along a chalky thoroughfare, stepped eagerly towards Lord Henry.

"My dear Lord Henry," she began, "so good of you to be in only to me. But oh, I felt I must see you before leaving town."

She turned and shook hands with St. Maur, and Lord Henry moved an easy chair in her direction.

"Oh, that's right; give me a chair, quick!" she gasped. "I'm broken—broken in body and spirit."

Lord Henry asked the expected question.

"Only this," she said, "that my life soon won't be worth a moment's purchase."

"You are tired," suggested her host. "You don't look after yourself."

"It isn't that," Mrs. Delarayne rejoined. "Nobody takes greater care of themselves than I do. I go to bed every night at ten o'clock precisely, and read until half-past two. What more can I do?"

Lord Henry blinked rapidly, and surveyed her with an air of deep interest. "And you say you are leaving town?" he enquired.

"Yes, I'm taking my family to Brineweald, you know. It is my annual penance, my yearly sacrificial offering to my children. It lasts just six weeks. By the end of it, of course, I am at death's door; but I feel that I can then face the remaining forty-six weeks of gross selfishness with a clean conscience and a brazen face."

"Who's going?"

"Oh, the usual crowd,—my daughters, of course, a friend of theirs, a young Jewess, and perhaps the Fearwell children. The men of the party and my sister Bella will be lodged at Sir Joseph's place, Brineweald Park."

"It sounds engaging enough," said St. Maur.

"Oh, most!" sighed Mrs. Delarayne. "Oh, you can't think what a happy mother I'd be if only I had no children!"

Both men laughed, and Mrs. Delarayne who, ever since her arrival, had been casting unmistakable glances at St. Maur, at last succeeded in silently conveying her meaning to him.

"Well, I'm afraid I must be going downstairs," he said, "I've letters to write."

She extended a hand with alacrity. "Oh, it looks as if I were driving you away," she said.

St. Maur protested feebly against this truthful interpretation of his proposed retreat, and withdrew.

Lord Henry took a seat opposite to his visitor, who was obviously as shy as a schoolgirl in his presence, and surveyed her covertly.

"Have you come to tell me that you have abandoned that absurd Inner Light?" he demanded playfully.

"No, indeed; why should I?" she rejoined with affected indignation.

"It is unpardonable," he murmured.

"Why unpardonable?"

"Had you been a Protestant in the past, it would at least have been comprehensible," he said, "because any kind of absurdity is possible after one has been a Protestant. What after all are all these ridiculous, new-fangled creeds but further schisms of Protestantism? But seeing that you were once a Catholic, I repeat, it is unpardonable."

Mrs. Delarayne purred resentfully, as if to imply that it would require something more than that line of persuasion to convince her of her error.

"What do you do to induce me to abandon anything—however erroneous?" she protested at last. "It isn't as if you were even remaining in the country. You are going away. But I cannot bear to think of your going away."

Lord Henry folded his hands and scrutinised her for a moment beneath lowered brows. Her manner was unmistakable; she revealed as much of her game as her dignity allowed. His heart softened towards her.

"Is it so much to you that I am going?" he demanded.

"Oh, no," she replied, mock cheerfully, "le roi est mort, vive le roi!"

"Haven't you a number of friends?"

"Weighed in the scales, of course," she said, "they represent a tremendous amount of friendship."

"Aren't your daughters an interest?"

"Too adorable, of course,—so adorable that I sometimes wish I'd never been born."

The problem as it presented itself to Lord Henry was rightly: how could this quinquagenarian be given a son whom she could worship? To Mrs. Delarayne the problem was: how could she induce this young man to overcome the obvious objection consisting in the disparity of their ages? She could read her own nature no further than this.

"Have you never any feelings of loneliness?" she demanded. "Don't you ever reflect upon the happiness you might secure yourself and somebody else by being decently married?"

"I might be tempted to marry. It is perfectly possible," Lord Henry replied. "Hitherto the only thing that has deterred me has been my vanity. It would be so horrible to watch the love a woman might bear me slowly turning to indifference,—for that is what marriage means,—that I don't think I could have the courage to embark upon the undertaking."

"You are flippant," said the widow sadly. "You pipe and joke while Rome is burning."

"One day, of course, I shall have to marry," he muttered, as if to himself.

She would have liked to ask him to Brineweald. She wanted a deep breath of him before he left. For some reason, however, for which she was not too anxious to account, she did not express this wish.

"Why will you have to?" she asked.

"I mean," he said, "simply what I am always repeating in my clinique, that save in the case of those who are really called to celibacy,—the Newmans, the Spencers, and the Nietzsches of this world,—physical and spiritual health is difficult without a normal sexual life."

"Quite so," the widow agreed.

"Quite so," Lord Henry repeated, "a normal sexual life." He emphasised the word "normal," hoping thereby to convey gently how hopeless her scheme was.

"And when will that be?"

"Oh, Heaven knows!"

She rose, went to the window, and there was a pause.

"Lord Henry," she began after a while, "would it seem odd to you? Would you think me shameless? Am I hopelessly abandoned, to tell you now, how very much more than mere friendship, mere gratitude I feel for you?"

He buried his face in his hands and held his breath. He knew this was inevitable; but as he had already told St. Maur, he had a heart.

She did not look at him, but continued speaking fluently, warmly, incisively.

"Ever since I met you, I have felt what all of us women long to feel, the ridiculous inferiority of the bulk of modern men suddenly relieved by an object which we are willing to serve and obey. Your cures, if you have ever effected any in me, were just that,—not your regimens or your analyses,—but your words, your glance, the touch of your hand, your presence. Everybody knows you have a bewildering presence. I need not add to the idle compliments you must receive on all hands. But surely I have recognised the greatness beneath the outward glamour. And it has cast a spell over me. I admit it. I am fettered to it, riveted to it. We women suffer to-day because we have no such men as you to look up to. Oh, to have met for once something great, something precious, in a world where these things are so rare!"

He glanced up at her. He could not help observing her spruce footgear smothered in the dust of the road, her straight proud back, her fine profile outlined against the bright colours of the chintz, and her blue-veined hands. And he felt an uncontrollable impulse to tell her how deeply he admired her.

"You are no fool," she pursued; "you must have known that I loved you. Therefore I'm only confirming what you already know. But, believe me, Lord Henry, I am something more than one of your interesting cases."

He protested.

"Yes, I know; you always say women cannot understand men, because to comprehend is to comprise, and the smaller cannot comprise the greater——"

He smiled approvingly.

"You see how accurately I can quote you. That is possibly true. I do not claim to be able to understand you. But surely you will grant me that a woman may have a deep and very real knowledge of being in the presence of something exceptionally great, without precisely understanding it?"

Lord Henry rose. He was blinking rapidly and tugging with more than usual force at his mesh of hair.

"Am I impossible?" she asked hoarsely. "Is the disparity of our ages such that, hitherto, the thought of our being more than friends has been unthinkable to you?"

He went to her side by the window. Words were forming on his lips, but they would make no sentence. She saw his lips moving and noticed his distress.

"Is it not a sign of our deep sympathy that you are the only man in all England in whose presence I forget my ghastly age, my half century and more expended on futilities?"

He took her hand.

"Oh, Edith Delarayne, you wonderful creature!" he exclaimed; "that is the tragedy. You put your finger on the tragedy. If only you could be twenty again, what a wife you would make for me!"

She gave a little sob and fell into his arms. "Oh, my boy, my dear boy!" she cried, and kissed his hand almost with the avidity of hunger, as it clasped hers on his shoulder.

She released herself slowly and lightly dabbed her eyes.

"When are you going away?" he demanded gravely.

"The day after to-morrow," she replied.

"Write to me as usual," he said.

She caught his hand and grasped it firmly. "Oh, Lord Henry, be the same to me!" she pleaded.

He laughed the plea to scorn. "Of course I'll always be the same to you. What do you think?"

She saw that he meant it and moved lightly towards the door. "I must be going," she said, putting away her handkerchief, and trying to control an awkward catch in her breath which was reminiscent of her weeping.

He urged her to stay for lunch; he offered to have her fetched by the Sanatorium car; he begged to be allowed to accompany her back to Ashbury; but she stalwartly refused; and in a moment he and St. Maur were watching her, sprightly as a girl, tripping back along the dusty road to the station.

"My boy, my dear boy," he muttered to St. Maur, "that is what she felt, that is what she said. The unconscious voice in her knew the desired relationship and expressed the wish, although the conscious mind thought only of 'husband.'"