; but there were marvellous things to be
read in her face. Ah, but give me the girls of Venice! You know them, how they
walk about the piazza; their tall, lithe forms, the counterpart of the
gondolier; their splendid black hair, elaborately braided and pierced with large
ornaments; their noble, aristocratic, grave features; their long shawls! What
natural dignity! What eloquent eyes! I like to imagine them profoundly
intellectual, which they are unhappily not.«
    Marsh had withdrawn from colloquy with the Germans, and kept glancing across
the table at his compatriots, obviously wishing that he might join them.
Mallard, upon whom Elgar's excited talk jarred more and more, noticed the
stranger's looks, and at length leaned forward to speak to him.
    »As usual, we are in a minority among the sun-worshippers.«
    »Sun-worshippers! Good!« laughed the other. »Yes, I have never met more than
one or two chance Englishmen at the Sole.«
    »But you are at your ease with our friends there. - I think you know as
little German as I do, Elgar?«
    »Devilish bad at languages! To tell you the truth, I can't endure the sense
of inferiority one has in beginning to smatter with foreigners. I read four or
five, but avoid speaking as much as possible.«
    Marsh took an early opportunity of alluding to the argument in which he had
recently taken part. The subject was resumed. At Elgar's bidding the waiter had
brought cigars, and things looked comfortable; the Germans talked with more
animation than ever.
    »One of the worst evils of democracy in England,« said Reuben, forcibly, »is
its alliance with Puritan morality.«
    »Oh, that is being quickly outgrown,« cried Marsh. »Look at the spread of
rationalism.«
    »You take it for granted that Puritanism doesn't survive religious dogma?
Believe me, you are greatly mistaken. I am sorry to say I have a large
experience in this question. The mass of the English people have no genuine
religious belief, but none the less they are Puritans in morality. The same
applies to the vastly greater part of those who even repudiate Christianity.«
    »One must take account of the national hypocrisy,« remarked the younger man,
with an air of superiority, shaking his head as his habit was.
    »It's a complicated matter. The representative English bourgeois is a
hypocrite in essence, but is perfectly serious in his judgment of the man
