“Surely to God you don’t expect me to take off my hat, like a music-hall serio, when I speak of Home and Mother.”
“No, that would be rather silly—still—”
“One must judge the value of things and persons on two counts—their service and their effect. If their service is negligible, and they produce no effect, it is clearly useless to have any further dealings with them.”
“I don’t like that,” said Eve. “It’s a cold philosophy. You sponge the wine from the cellars and complain when the vats are empty.”
“I don’t complain—I pass on. One must, or die of thirst.”
“It is a false thirst.”
“That doesn’t matter so long as one feels it acutely.”
She generally allowed him the luxury of supplying the phrase to round off an argument. It is a tribute to the gallantry of women that they will allow the vanquished to feel he is the victor, and as true of the best of them as the popular belief to the contrary is false.
Wynne joined the Phœnician, and after a while came to spend much of his time there. It made, he said, a change from the never-ending sameness of their penny-threefarthing home.
It was so long since he had foregathered with fellow-men that at first he spent his club hours in shy silence. He would sit, ostensibly reading a periodical, and actually listening to the conversation of those about him. In so doing he learnt many things in regard to the subjects which men will discuss one with another. The Phœnician was to a great extent a rabble club. The members were composed of professional men—artists, writers, actors, and those curious individuals who form a tail-light to the arts, being bracketed on as a kind of chorus. These latter always appeared to be well provided with money and ill provided with brains. They knew the names of many stage people, and reeled them off one after another as a parrot delivers its limited vocabulary. Seemingly they derived much pleasure from the practice, and their happiest conversational circumstance was to mention some one whose name they had never introduced before.