anything in the shape of art or literature. The aristocracy--the most
exhausted of all our exhausted social strata--what can be expected from
_it_? Why, we haven't anywhere nowadays either art or literature or
drama that is worthy of the name--not anywhere--it is all a ghastly,
spurious make-believe--a mechanical manufactory of paintings and books
and plays without a spark of life in them--"


[Illustration: "_When they had finished supper, Lionel Moore lit a
cigarette, and his friend a brier-root pipe._"]


Lionel Moore resentfully thought to himself that if Mr. Quirk had been
able to do anything in any one of these directions he might have held
less despairing views; but, of course, he did not interrupt this feebly
tempestuous monologue.

"--We are all played out, that is the fact--the soil is exhausted--we
want a great national upheaval--a new condition of things--a social
revolution, in short. And we're going to get it" he continued, in a sort
of triumphant way; "there's no mistake about that; the social revolution
is in the air, it is under our feet, it is pressing in upon us from
every side; and yet at the very moment that the aristocracy have got
notice to quit their deer-forests and their salmon-rivers and
grouse-moors, they so far mistake the signs of the times that they think
they should be devoting themselves to art and going on the stage! Was
there ever such incomprehensible madness?"

"I hope they won't sweep away deer-forests and grouse-moors just all at
once," the young baritone said, modestly, "for I am asked to go to the