She did not see that Hewet kept looking at her across the gangway,
between the figures of waiters hurrying past with plates. He was
inattentive, and Hirst was finding him also very cross and disagreeable.
They had touched upon all the usual topics--upon politics and
literature, gossip and Christianity. They had quarrelled over the
service, which was every bit as fine as Sappho, according to Hewet;
so that Hirst's paganism was mere ostentation. Why go to church, he
demanded, merely in order to read Sappho? Hirst observed that he had
listened to every word of the sermon, as he could prove if Hewet would
like a repetition of it; and he went to church in order to realise the
nature of his Creator, which he had done very vividly that morning,
thanks to Mr. Bax, who had inspired him to write three of the most
superb lines in English literature, an invocation to the Deity.

"I wrote 'em on the back of the envelope of my aunt's last letter," he
said, and pulled it from between the pages of Sappho.

"Well, let's hear them," said Hewet, slightly mollified by the prospect
of a literary discussion.

"My dear Hewet, do you wish us both to be flung out of the hotel by
an enraged mob of Thornburys and Elliots?" Hirst enquired. "The merest
whisper would be sufficient to incriminate me for ever. God!" he broke
out, "what's the use of attempting to write when the world's peopled by
such damned fools? Seriously, Hewet, I advise you to give up literature.
What's the good of it? There's your audience."

He nodded his head at the tables where a very miscellaneous collection
of Europeans were now engaged in eating, in some cases in gnawing, the
stringy foreign fowls. Hewet looked, and grew more out of temper than