Manalive. Гилберт Кит Честертон

or not, I like life and success, and jolly things to look at, and action. You won't frighten me with Diogenes; I prefer Alexander."

      "Victrix causa deae --" said Michael gloomily; and this angered her more, as, not knowing what it meant, she imagined it to be witty.

      "Oh, I dare say you know Greek," she said, with cheerful inaccuracy; "you haven't done much with that either." And she crossed the garden, pursuing the vanished Innocent and Mary.

      In doing so she passed Inglewood, who was returning to the house slowly, and with a thought-clouded brow. He was one of those men who are quite clever, but quite the reverse of quick. As he came back out of the sunset garden into the twilight parlour, Diana Duke slipped swiftly to her feet and began putting away the tea things. But it was not before Inglewood had seen an instantaneous picture so unique that he might well have snapshotted it with his everlasting camera. For Diana had been sitting in front of her unfinished work with her chin on her hand, looking straight out of the window in pure thoughtless thought.

      "You are busy," said Arthur, oddly embarrassed with what he had seen, and wishing to ignore it.

      "There's no time for dreaming in this world," answered the young lady with her back to him.

      "I have been thinking lately," said Inglewood in a low voice, "that there's no time for waking up."

      She did not reply, and he walked to the window and looked out on the garden.

      "I don't smoke or drink, you know," he said irrelevantly, "because I think they're drugs. And yet I fancy all hobbies, like my camera and bicycle, are drugs too. Getting under a black hood, getting into a dark room -- getting into a hole anyhow. Drugging myself with speed, and sunshine, and fatigue, and fresh air. Pedaling the machine so fast that I turn into a machine myself. That's the matter with all of us. We're too busy to wake up."

      "Well," said the girl solidly, "what is there to wake up to?"

      "There must be!" cried Inglewood, turning round in a singular excitement -- "there must be something to wake up to! All we do is preparations -- your cleanliness, and my healthiness, and Warner's scientific appliances. We're always preparing for something -- something that never comes off. I ventilate the house, and you sweep the house; but what is going to happen in the house?"

      She was looking at him quietly, but with very bright eyes, and seemed to be searching for some form of words which she could not find.

      Before she could speak the door burst open, and the boisterous Rosamund Hunt, in her flamboyant white hat, boa, and parasol, stood framed in the doorway. She was in a breathing heat, and on her open face was an expression of the most infantile astonishment.

      "Well, here's a fine game!" she said, panting. "What am I to do now, I wonder? I've wired for Dr. Warner; that's all I can think of doing."

      "What is the matter?" asked Diana, rather sharply, but moving forward like one used to be called upon for assistance.

      "It's Mary," said the heiress, "my companion Mary Gray: that cracked friend of yours called Smith has proposed to her in the garden, after ten hours' acquaintance, and he wants to go off with her now for a special licence."

      Arthur Inglewood walked to the open French windows and looked out on the garden, still golden with evening light. Nothing moved there but a bird or two hopping and twittering; but beyond the hedge and railings, in the road outside the garden gate, a hansom cab was waiting, with the yellow Gladstone bag on top of it.