’But what you have never explained to me yet, dear, or if you did, I didn’t understand—­you don’t mind my being a little stupid, do you?—­ is, what object Mr. Pepys had in putting down all this in such a form that no one could read it.’

’Well, you must bear in mind, dear, that he could read it himself.  Besides he was a fellow with a singularly methodical side to his mind.  He was, for example, continually adding up how much money he had, or cataloguing and indexing his library, and so on.  He liked to have everything shipshape.  And so with his life, it pleased him to have an exact record which he could turn to.  And yet, after all, I don’t know that that is a sufficient explanation.’

‘No, indeed, it is not.  My experience of man—­’

‘Your experience, indeed!’

’Yes, sir, my experience of men—­how rude you are, Frank!—­tells me that they have funny little tricks and vanities which take the queerest shapes.’

‘Indeed!  Have I any?’

’You—­you are compounded of them.  Not vanity—­no, I don’t mean that.  But pride—­you are as proud as Lucifer, and much too proud to show it.  That is the most subtle form of pride.  Oh yes, I know perfectly well what I mean.  But in this man’s case, it took the form of wishing to make a sensation after his death.  He could not publish such a thing when he lived, could he?’

‘Rather not.’

’Well, then, he had to do it after his death.  He had to write it in cipher, or else some one would have found him out during his lifetime.  But, very likely, he left a key to the cipher, so that every one might read it when he was gone, but the key and his directions were in some way lost.’

‘Well, it is very probable.’

The fire had died down, so Maude shipped off her chair, and sat on the black fur rug, with her back against Frank’s knees.  ’Now, dear, read away!’ said she.

But the lamp shone down upon her dainty head, and it gleamed upon her white neck, and upon the fluffy, capricious, untidy, adorable, little curlets, which broke out along the edges of the gathered strands of her chestnut hair.  And so, after the fashion of men, his thoughts flew away from Mr. Pepys and the seventeenth century, and all that is lofty and instructive, and could fix upon nothing except those dear little wandering tendrils, and the white column on which they twined.  Alas, that so small a thing can bring the human mind from its empyrean flights!  Alas, that vague emotions can drag down the sovereign intellect!  Alas, that even for an hour, a man should prefer the material to the spiritual!

But the man who doesn’t misses a good deal.

CHAPTER XIII—­A VISIT TO MR. SAMUEL PEPYS

There are several unjustifiable extravagances which every normal man commits.  There are also several unjustifiable economies.  Among others, there is that absurd eagerness to save the striking of a second match, which occasions so many burned fingers, and such picturesque language.  And again, there is the desire to compress a telegraphic message into the minimum sixpennyworth, and so send an ambiguous and cryptic sentence, when sevenpence would have made it as clear as light.  We all tend to be stylists in our telegrams.