"
Monsieur Felix Senn wandered on to the St. Philip's Club, where he found
his old friend Prince Karschoff talking in a corner of the smoking room
with Nigel. They were both of them prepared for the news which he
presently communicated to them. Karschoff was bitter, Nigel silent.
"Well said Carlyle that 'History is philosophy teaching by examples',"
the former expounded. "How the historian of the future will revel in
this epoch! What treatises he will write, what parallels he will draw!
See him point to the days when the aristocracy ruled England, and
England fought and flourished; then to the epoch when the _bourgeoisie_
took their place, and with a mighty effort, met a great emergency and
flourished. And finally, in sympathy with the great European upheaval,
in sympathy with the great natural law of change, Labour ousts both,
single-eyed Labour, and down goes England, crumbling into the dust!--Let
us lunch, my friends. The cuisine is still good here."
Nigel excused himself.
"I am engaged," he said. "We may meet afterwards."
"Something tells me, my dear Nigel," Karschoff declared, "that you are
bent on frivolity."
"If to lunch with a woman is frivolous, I plead guilty," Nigel replied.
Karschoff's face was suddenly grave. He seemed on the point of saying
something but checked himself and turned away with a little shrug of the
shoulders.
"Each one to his taste," he murmured. "For my aperitif, a dash of
absinthe in my cocktail; for Dorminster here, the lure of a woman's
smile.
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