"Excess is very evil," Mr. Smith said rather rigidly. "Excess in everything seems to be characteristic of our age. I could wish that many would return to the ascetic life. No wine, thank you."
"Indeed, yes," said Mrs. Windsor, "that is what I always think. There is something so beautiful in not eating and drinking, and not marrying, and all that; but at least we must acknowledge that celibacy is quite coming into fashion. Our young men altogether refuse to marry nowadays. Let us hope that is a step in the right direction."
"If they married more and drank less, I don't fancy their morals would suffer much," Madame Valtesi remarked with exceeding dryness, looking at Mr. Smith's budding tonsure through her tortoise-shell eyeglass.
"The monastic life is very beautiful," said Lord Reggie. "I always find when I go to a monastery, that the monks give me very excellent wine. I suppose they keep all their hair shirts for their own private use."
"That is the truest hospitality, isn't it," said Lady Locke.
"The high church party are showing us the right way," Mr. Amarinth remarked impressively, with a side-anthem glance at Lord Reggie which spoke volumes. "They understand the value of æstheticism in religion. They recognise the fact that a beautiful vestment uplifts the soul far more than a dozen bad chants by Stainer, or Barnby, or any other unmusical Christian. The average Anglican chant is one of the most unimaginative, unpoetical things in the world. It always reminds me of the cart-horse parade on Whit Monday. A brown Gregorian is so much more devotional."
"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Smith, who had been listening to these remarks with acquiescence, but who now manifested some obvious confusion.
"A brown Gregorian," Mr. Amarinth repeated. "All combinations of sounds convey a sense of colour to the mind. Gregorians are obviously of a rich and sombre brown, just as a Salvation Army hymn is a violent magenta."
"I think the Bishops are beginning to understand Gregorian music a little better. No plover's eggs, thank you," said Mr. Smith, who was totally without a sense of melody, but who assumed a complete musical authority, based on the fact that he intoned in church.
"The Bishops never go on understanding anything," said Mr. Amarinth. "They conceal their intelligence, if they have any, up their lawn sleeves. I once met a Bishop. It was at a garden party at Lambeth Palace. He took me aside into a small shrubbery, and informed me that he was really a Buddhist. He added that nearly all the Bishops were."