According to Plato

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“Who is the man?” was, it may be remembered the question to the solution of which he had addressed himself, and now he was not deterred by the paragraph in the letter just received from her—the paragraph which was meant to give him assurance of the immobility of her affections—from once again asking himself that question:

“Who is the man?”

He had been unable to find any plausible answer to that question during the weeks that had elapsed since Mr. Shirley’s dinner, though in the meantime he had met Josephine twice and upon each occasion had shown the utmost adroitness in the enquiries he put to her quite casually, and without premeditation, with a view to approaching a step nearer to the solution of the question.

He could not hear that she had met any man whom he could feel justified in regarding as a possible rival; but in spite of this fact he could not bring himself to believe that her sudden appreciation of the falseness of her position was due to a sudden access of sensitiveness. His long and close connection with a political association had made him take a cynical view of the motives of men. When he heard at any time of the conscience of a politician being greatly perturbed in regard to any question, he had never any difficulty in finding out exactly what that particular gentleman wanted—whether it was a Knighthood, a recognition of his wife at a Foreign office reception, or a chat for five minutes with a Cabinet Minister on the Terrace on a day when the Terrace is crowded. He flattered himself that he could within twenty-four hours diagnose the most obstinate case of that insidious malady Politician’s Conscience, and prescribe for it a specific that never failed if applied according to his instructions.

Thus it was that he was led to take what he called a practical view of any psychological incident that came under his notice. He regarded psychology as rather more of an exact science than meteorology. It was altogether a question of so many atmospheric pressures, he thought; even the force of spiritual cataclysms could be calculated, if one only took the trouble to use one’s experience as a scisometer.

Thus it was that although he had not yet discovered the identity of the man who, in his opinion, had caused that excess of sensitiveness on the part of Josephine, he was as certain of his existence as the astronomer was of the planet known as Uranus, through observing certain aberrations on the part of the planet Saturn, due to attraction.

He hoped one day before long to be able to calculate the position of the attractive but unknown man and to be able to see him without the aid of a telescope.

Meantime, however, he knew that he would have to answer that letter which lay before him, and for the moment he scarcely knew how it should be replied to.

While he was giving all his consideration to this question, a clerk knocked at the door of his room and entered with a card, bearing the name of Sir Harcourt Mortimer, the Minister for the Arbitration Department.

He directed the visitor to be shown upstairs: it was no new thing for a Cabinet Minister to pay a visit to the Central Offices of the Great Organisation, and while Sir Harcourt was coming up crimson-carpeted stairs, the Secretary slipped the letter which he had been reading into the breast pocket of his coat, and wondered if he could by any possibility bring the presence of the Chief to his Department to bear upon the Under-Secretary, Mr. Philip West, to induce him to consent to his daughter marrying so obscure, but powerful a man as the Secretary of the Argus Organisation.