"Is it true that Mr. Haweis introduced his congregation to a Mahatma in the vestry after service last Sunday?" said Madame Valtesi. "I heard so, and that he has persuaded Little Tich to read the lessons for the rest of the season. I think it is rather hard upon the music halls. There is really so much competition nowadays!"
"I know nothing about Mr. Haweis," said Mr. Smith, drinking some water from a wineglass. "I understood he was a conjurer, or an entertainer, or something of that kind."
"Oh no, he is quite a clergyman," exclaimed Mrs. Windsor. "Quite; except when he is in the pulpit, of course. And then I suppose he thinks it more religious to drop it."
"Since I have been away there has been a great change in services," said Lady Locke. "They are so much brighter and more cheerful."
"Yes, Christians are getting very lively," said Madame Valtesi, helping herself to a cutlet in aspic. "They demand plenty of variety in their devotional exercises, and what Arthur Roberts, or somebody, calls 'short turns.' The most popular of all the London clergymen invariably has an anthem that lasts half-an-hour, and preaches for five minutes by a stop watch."
"I scarcely think that music should entirely oust doctrine," began Mr. Smith, refusing an entrée with a gentle wave of his hand.
"The clergyman I sit under," said Mrs. Windsor, "always stops for several minutes before his sermon, so that the people can go out if they want to."
"How inconsiderate," said Mr. Amarinth; "of course no one dares to move. English people never dare to move, except at the wrong time. They think it is less noticeable to go out at a concert during a song than during an interval. The English labour under so many curious delusions. They think they are respectable, for instance, if they are not noticed, and that to be talked about is to be fast. Of course the really fast people are never talked about at all. Half the young men in London, whose names are by-words, are intensely and hopelessly virtuous. They know it, and that is why they look so pale. The consciousness of virtue is a terrible thing, is it not, Mr. Smith?"
"I am afraid I hardly caught what you were saying. No pudding, thank you," said that gentleman.
"I was saying that we moderns are really all much better than we seem. There is far more hypocrisy of vice nowadays than hypocrisy of virtue. The amount of excellence going about is positively quite amazing, if one only knows where to look for it; but good people in Society are so terribly afraid of being found out."