"I wonder where she is now?" he thinks to himself. "Pshaw! married, of course, long ago. I wonder I have not forgotten her. Thirteen years of such a life as mine ought to knock all memories and romance out of one."
He laughs a little bitterly and impatiently, and then plunges into a discussion with his friend, which resolves itself into an arrangement to dine and go to the theatre together afterwards.
"I have promised to look in at Vane's rooms," says Major Trentermain. "You'll come too, won't you? He is full of some new craze—æstheticism, he calls it. All his people have gone in for it extensively, and he seems to be bitten with the same mania. You really should see his rooms. Quite a study."
"Oh, yes; I'll come," answers Carlisle indifferently. He is rarely anything else but indifferent now. Nothing rouses or interests him except, perhaps, "big game" or hard fighting.
They go to the Gaiety. To Carlisle the performance seems idiotic in the extreme.
"Do come away. I can't stand this trash," he mutters impatiently.
"But that's Belle Burton singing," remonstrates Trentermain, who is more "up" to the goings on of London as it is, than his friend.
"What of that?" demands Carlisle.
"Every one's talking of her. She's——" (Then comes a mysterious whisper.) Colonel Carlisle frowns and tugs his heavy moustache.
"Vice idealized as 'celebrity.' Umph! That's a modern definition? Suppose I'm old-fashioned enough to look upon it as it is. Come, you can't really care for such rubbish, Trent. It's an insult to common sense, I think. And look at that row of vapid idiots grinning from ear to ear—boys with the blasé faces of men, and limbs like thread-paper. Fine stuff for soldiers there!"