It was time, too, that he was done with France. Indeed, Mr. Quogge Myre, who had so sworn by the French intellect and French art, who had so flouted the vulgarity of the English nation of shopkeepers, found that there were now so many crossing the Channel to Paris that he realized they were discovering and exploiting the sources of his originality.
He looked in the mirror. There was no slightest doubt about it, he was becoming puffy, middle-aged, just a leetle bourgeois! He wondered if he had always looked rather a common fellow. Tush! he had been surrendering to the bourgeois ideals—he had married!
Well, the last Clatter about him had run down. He must start another.
Yes, he must strike quickly in England—or they would be discovering this Nietzsche for themselves.
Some days after Mr. Myre’s notorious book appeared, he walked into a café frequented by literary men; and he saw that his coming produced a sensation.
He went up to a table where Aubrey sat with Noll and Rupert Greppel and Lord Montagu Askew and others; and putting his hand on Aubrey’s shoulder he said airily:
“This book will give my lady her freedom.”
He flung the volume upon the table, and called for a bock of beer with carefully rehearsed calm.
Noll took up the book, She Whom I Once Loved, and skimmed through the recital, shamelessly and brutally detailed, of this conceited fellow’s relations with women. They were of every class....
“Rather vivid!” said Noll, after Myre had yawed away an hour of time. And he added drily: “Yes; you’ll get your divorce.”