The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection. W. Somerset Maugham

years,' answered Alec, smiling. 'I know that, though you're impulsive and emotional, you're not without shrewdness; I know that your brain acts very quickly and sees all kinds of remote contingencies; then you're so pleased at having noticed them that you act as if they were certain to occur. Given these data, I can tell pretty well what cards you have, after they've gone round two or three times.'

      'The knowledge you have of your opponents' cards is too uncanny,' said Mrs. Crowley.

      'I can tell a good deal from people's faces. You see, in Africa I have had a lot of experience; it's apparently so much easier for the native to lie than to tell the truth that you get into the habit of paying no attention to what he says, and a great deal to the way he looks.'

      While Mrs. Crowley made herself comfortable in the chair, which she had already chosen as her favourite, Dick went over to the fire and stood in front of it in such a way as effectually to prevent the others from getting any of its heat.

      'What made you first take to exploration?' asked Mrs. Crowley suddenly.

      Alec gave her that slow, scrutinising look of his, and answered, with a smile:

      'I don't know. I had nothing to do and plenty of money.'

      'Not a bit of it,' interrupted Dick. 'A lunatic wanted to find out about some district that people had never been to, and it wouldn't have been any use to them if they had, because, if the natives didn't kill you, the climate made no bones about it. He came back crippled with fever, having failed in his attempt, and, after asserting that no one could get into the heart of Rofa's country and return alive, promptly gave up the ghost. So Alec immediately packed up his traps and made for the place.'

      'I proved the man was wrong,' said Alec quietly. 'I became great friends with Rofa, and he wanted to marry my sister, only I hadn't one.'

      'And if anyone said it was impossible to hop through Asia on one foot, you'd go and do it just to show it could be done,' retorted Dick 'You have a passion for doing things because they're difficult or dangerous, and, if they're downright impossible, you chortle with joy.'

      'You make me really too melodramatic,' smiled Alec.

      'But that's just what you are. You're the most transpontine person I ever saw in my life.' Dick turned to Lucy and Mrs. Crowley with a wave of the hand. 'I call you to witness. When he was at Oxford, Alec was a regular dab at classics; he had a gift for writing verses in languages that no one except dons wanted to read, and everyone thought that he was going to be the most brilliant scholar of his day.'

      'This is one of Dick's favourite stories,' said Alec. 'It would be quite amusing if there were any truth in it.'

      But Dick would not allow himself to be interrupted.

      'At mathematics, on the other hand, he was a perfect ass. You know, some people seem to have that part of their brains wanting that deals with figures, and Alec couldn't add two and two together without making a hexameter out of it. One day his tutor got in a passion with him and said he'd rather teach arithmetic to a brick wall. I happened to be present, and he was certainly very rude. He was a man who had a precious gift for making people feel thoroughly uncomfortable. Alec didn't say anything, but he looked at him; and, when he flies into a temper, he doesn't get red and throw things about like a pleasant, normal person--he merely becomes a little paler and stares at you.'

      'I beg you not to believe a single word he says,' remonstrated Alec.

      'Well, Alec threw over his classics. Everyone concerned reasoned with him; they appealed to his common sense; they were appealing to the most obstinate fool in Christendom. Alec had made up his mind to be a mathematician. For more than two years he worked ten hours a day at a subject he loathed; he threw his whole might into it and forced out of nature the gifts she had denied him, with the result that he got a first class. And much good it's done him.'

      Alec shrugged his shoulders.

      'It wasn't that I cared for mathematics, but it taught me to conquer the one inconvenient word in the English language.'

      'And what the deuce is that?'

      'I'm afraid it sounds very priggish,' laughed Alec. 'The word _impossible_.'

      Dick gave a little snort of comic rage.

      'And it also gave you a ghastly pleasure in doing things that hurt you. Oh, if you'd only been born in the Middle Ages, what a fiendish joy you would have taken in mortifying your flesh, and in denying yourself everything that makes life so good to live! You're never thoroughly happy unless you're making yourself thoroughly miserable.'

      'Each time I come back to England I find that you talk more and greater nonsense, Dick,' returned Alec drily.

      'I'm one of the few persons now alive who can talk nonsense,' answered his friend, laughing. 'That's why I'm so charming. Everyone else is so deadly earnest.'

      He settled himself down to make a deliberate speech.

      'I deplore the strenuousness of the world in general. There is an idea abroad that it is praiseworthy to do things, and what they are is of no consequence so long as you do them. I hate the mad hurry of the present day to occupy itself. I wish I could persuade people of the excellence of leisure.'

      'One could scarcely accuse you of cultivating it yourself,' said Lucy, smiling.

      Dick looked at her for a moment thoughtfully.

      'Do you know that I'm hard upon forty?'

      'With the light behind, you might still pass for thirty-two,' interrupted Mrs. Crowley.

      He turned to her seriously.

      'I haven't a grey hair on my head.'

      'I suppose your servant plucks them out every morning?'

      'Oh, no, very rarely; one a month at the outside.'

      'I think I see one just beside the left temple.'

      He turned quickly to the glass.

      'Dear me, how careless of Charles! I shall have to give him a piece of my mind.'

      'Come here, and let me take it out,' said Mrs. Crowley.

      'I will let you do nothing of the sort I should consider it most familiar.'

      'You were giving us the gratuitous piece of information that you were nearly forty,' said Alec.

      'The thought came to me the other day with something of a shock, and I set about a scrutiny of the life I was leading. I've worked at the bar pretty hard for fifteen years now, and I've been in the House since the general election. I've been earning two thousand a year, I've got nearly four thousand of my own, and I've never spent much more than half my income. I wondered if it was worth while to spend eight hours a day settling the sordid quarrels of foolish people, and another eight hours in the farce of governing the nation.'

      'Why do you call it that?'

      Dick Lomas shrugged his shoulders scornfully.

      'Because it is. A few big-wigs rule the roost, and the rest of us are only there to delude the British people into the idea that they're a self-governing community.'

      'What is wrong with you is that you have no absorbing aim in politics,' said Alec gravely.

      'Pardon me, I am a suffragist of the most vehement type,' answered Dick, with a thin smile.

      'That's the last thing I should have expected you to be,' said Mrs. Crowley, who dressed with admirable taste. 'Why on earth have you taken to that?'

      Dick shrugged his shoulders.

      'No one can have been through a parliamentary election without discovering how unworthy,