that the preference belonged to Mr. Andrew Lang in connection with
a notable lady novelist; and the most intelligent--it was Mrs.
Barberry--replied that it did seem strange. The depths under the gallery
were critically attentive, though Llewellyn Stanhope felt them hostile
and longing for verbal brick-bats; and the Reverend Mr. Arnold shrank
into the farthest corner of Surgeon-Major Livingstone's box, and knew
all the misery of outrage. Pilate and the slave-maidens, Pilate's fat
wife, and an unspeakable comic centurion, offered as yet hardly more
than a prelude, but the monstrosity of the whole performance was already
projected upon Arnold's suffering imagination. This, then, was what
Patullo had done with it. But what other, he asked himself in quiet
anger, could Patullo have been expected to do? the fellow he remembered.
Arnold tilted his chair back and stared, with arms folded and sombre
brows, at the opposite wall. He looked once at the door, but some spirit
of self-torture kept him in his seat. If so much offence could be made
with the mere crust and envelope, so to speak, of the sacred story,
what sacrilege might not be committed with the divine personalities
concerned? He remembered, with the touch of almost physical nausea
that assailed him when he saw them, one or two pictures in recent Paris
exhibitions where the coveted accent of surprise had been produced by
representing the sacred figure in the trivial monde of the boulevards,
and fixed upon them as the source of Patullo's intolerable inspiration.
Certain muscles felt responsive at the thought of Patullo which Arnold
had forgotten he possessed; it was so seldom that a missionary priest,
even of athletic traditions, came in contact with anybody who required
to be kicked.

Alicia was in front with the Yardleys, dropping her unfailing plummet
into the evening's experience. Arnold, hesitating over the rudeness of
departure, thought she was sufficiently absorbed; she would hardly mind.