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himself, in talking with a genuine outsider.
‘I’m very fond of Rome, you know,’ Osmond said, ‘but
there’s nothing I like better than to meet people who haven’t
that superstition. The modern world’s after all very fine.
Now you’re thoroughly modern and yet are not at all com-
mon. So many of the moderns we see are such very poor
stuff. If they’re the children of the future we’re willing to die
young. Of course the ancients too are often very tiresome.
My wife and I like everything that’s really new-not the mere
pretence of it. There’s nothing new, unfortunately, in igno-
rance and stupidity. We see plenty of that in forms that offer
themselves as a revelation of progress, of fight. A revelation
of vulgarity! There’s a certain kind of vulgarity which I be-
lieve is really new; I don’t think there ever was anything
like it before. Indeed I don’t find vulgarity, at all, before the
present century. You see a faint menace of it here and there
in the last, but to-day the air has grown so dense that del-
icate things are literally not recognized. Now, we’ve liked
you-!’ With which he hesitated a moment, laying his hand
gently on Goodwood’s knee and smiling with a mixture of
assurance and embarrassment. ‘I’m going to say something
extremely offensive and patronizing, but you must let me
have the satisfaction of it. We’ve liked you because-because
you’ve reconciled us a little to the future. If there are to be
a certain number of people like you-a la bonne heure! I’m
talking for my wife as well as for myself, you see. She speaks
for me, my wife; why shouldn’t I speak for her? We’re as
united, you know, as the candlestick and the snuffers. Am I
assuming too much when I say that I think I’ve understood

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