"I haven't many likes left now. I like to be amused as much as possible."
After a time they left the music-hall, and while they were walking through clubland the stranger permitted himself more freedom of expression, talking cynically. He was a middle-aged man, and Gobion amused him immensely.
"How badly brought up you must have been," he said to him.
"Why, what makes you think so?"
"You vibrate so quickly to my views, and I am not considered orthodox."
"Well, I was not so much badly brought up, as left to myself. My father's pedigree claimed a larger share of his attention than his progeny. I was an accident in the domestic arrangements."
"He must be a strange person."
"He is. I always suspect my predisposition to shady pleasures is hereditary, although he is a parson."
"It's quite often the case that a repentant rake takes Orders from a mere revulsion to asceticism. And your mother?"