On the lawn he found Lady Locke sitting alone, sipping her coffee in a basket chair. Madame Valtesi and Mrs. Windsor had strolled into the scented rose garden to discuss the inner details of a forthcoming divorce case. The murmur of their voices, uttering names of co-respondents, was faintly heard now and then as they passed up and down the tiny formal paths.
Esmé Amarinth sank down into a chair by Lady Locke and sighed heavily.
"What is the matter?" she asked.
"You have a beautiful soul," he said softly, "and I have a beautiful soul too. Why should there not be a sympathy between us? Lady Locke, I am the victim of depression. I am suffering from the malady of life. I usually have an attack of it in the morning, but it flies when the stars come out and leaves me brilliant. What can be the matter with me to-night? I ask myself the question with the most poignant anxiety, I can assure you."
She glanced at his large and solemn face, at his ample cheeks and loose mouth, and smiled slightly.
"Some circumstances have been unkind to you, perhaps?" she said.
"That could not hurt me," he answered, "for, thank Heaven! I am no philosopher, and never take facts seriously. Circumstances, my dear Lady Locke, are the lashes laid into us by life. Some of us have to receive them with bared ivory backs, and others are permitted to keep on a coat—that is the only difference."
"Are you a pessimist?" she asked.
"I hope so. I look upon optimism as a most quaint disease, an eruption that breaks out upon the soul, and destroys all its interest, all its beauty. The optimist dresses up the amazing figures of life like Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses, and pipes a foolish tune—the Old Hundredth or some such thing—for them to dance to. We cannot all refuse to see anything but comic opera peasants around us."
"Yet we need not replace them with pantomime demons."