existence were a mystery, a young man of fifty, who had done nothing and
who knew every one by his first name, the club postman, who carried the
tittle-tattle, the _bon mots_ and the news of the day, who drew up a
petition a week and pursued the house committee with a daily grievance.

About the latticed porch, which ran around the sanded yard with its
feeble fountain and futile evergreens, other groups were eying one
another, or engaging in desultory conversation, oppressed with the
heaviness of the night.

At the round table, Quinny alone, absorbing energy as he devoured the
conversation, having routed Steingall on the Germans and archæology and
Rankin on the origins of the Lord's Prayer, had seized a chance remark
of De Gollyer's to say:

"There are only half a dozen stories in the world. Like everything
that's true it isn't true." He waved his long, gouty fingers in the
direction of Steingall, who, having been silenced, was regarding him
with a look of sleepy indifference. "What is more to the point, is the
small number of human relations that are so simple and yet so
fundamental that they can be eternally played upon, redressed, and
reinterpreted in every language, in every age, and yet remain
inexhaustible in the possibility of variations."

"By George, that is so," said Steingall, waking up. "Every art does go
back to three or four notes. In composition it is the same thing.
Nothing new--nothing new since a thousand years. By George, that is
true! We invent nothing, nothing!"

"Take the eternal triangle," said Quinny hurriedly, not to surrender his