"_You_ may come in here, if you like. Mr. Moore said you wished to
know about stage make-up and that kind of thing--I will show you all the
dreadful secrets--Jane!" Thereupon these three disappeared behind the
curtain, and Lord Rockminster was left alone.

But Lord Rockminster liked being left alone. He was a great thinker, who
rarely revealed his thoughts, but who was quite happy in possessing
them. He could sit for an hour at a club-window, calmly gazing out into
the street, and be perfectly content. It is true that the pale
tobacco-tinge that overspread the young man's fair complexion seemed to
speak of an out-of-door life; but he had long ago emancipated himself
from the tyranny of field-sports. That thraldom had begun early with
him, as with most of his class. He had hardly been out of his Eton
jacket when gillies and water-bailiffs got hold of him, and made him
thrash salmon-pools with a seventeen-foot rod until his back was
breaking; and then keepers and foresters had taken possession of him,
and compelled him to crawl for miles up wet gullies and across
peat-hags, and then put a rifle in his hand, expecting him to hit a
bewildering object on the other side of a corrie when, as a matter of
fact, his heart was like to burst with excitement and fear. But the
young man had some strength of character. He rebelled; he refused to be
driven like a slave any longer; he struck for freedom and won it. There
was still much travelling to be encountered; but when he had got that
over, when he had seen everything and done everything, and there was
nothing more to do or to see, then he became master of himself and
conducted himself accordingly. Contemplation, accompanied by a
cigarette, was now his chief good. What his meditations were no one
knew, but they sufficed unto himself. He had attained Nirvana. He lived
in a region of perpetual thought.