“No, you wouldn’t, Paul!  And my judgment’s warped, is it?” There was irritation in Mr. Prohack’s voice.  He took out his watch.  “In sixty or seventy seconds you shall hear that clock strike eleven, and you shall give me your honest views about it.  And you shall apologise to me.”

Sir Paul obediently and sympathetically listened, while the murmur of the glowing reception and the low beat of music continued within.

“You tell me when it starts to strike,” said he.

“You won’t want any telling,” said Mr. Prohack, who knew too well the riving, rending, smashing sound of the terrible bells.

“It’s a pretty long seventy seconds,” observed Sir Paul.

“My watch must be fast,” said Mr. Prohack, perturbed.

But at eighteen minutes past eleven the clock had audibly struck neither the hour nor the quarter.  Sir Paul was a man of tact.  He said simply: 

“I should like a drink, dear old boy.”

“The clock’s not striking,” said Mr. Prohack, with solemn joy, as the wonderful truth presented itself to him.  “Either it’s stopped, or they’ve cut off the striking attachment.”  And to one of the maids on the landing he said as they passed towards the buffet:  “Run out and see what time it is by the church clock, and come back and tell me, will you?” A few minutes later he was informed that the church clock showed half-past eleven.  The clock therefore was still going but had ceased to strike.  Mr. Prohack at once drank two glasses of champagne at the buffet, while Sir Paul had the customary whiskey.

“I say, old thing, I say!” Sir Paul protested.

“I shall sleep!” said Mr. Prohack in a loud, gay, triumphant voice.  He was a new man.

* * * * *

The reception now seemed to him far more superb than ever.  It was almost at its apogee.  All the gilt chairs were occupied; all the couches and fauteuils of the room were occupied, and certain delicious toilettes were even spread on rugs or on the bare, reflecting floors.  On every hand could be heard artistic discussions, serious and informed and yet lightsome in tone.  If it was not the real originality of jazz music that was being discussed, it was the sureness of the natural untaught taste of the denizens of the East End and South London, and if not that then the greatness of male revue artistes, and if not that then the need of a national theatre and of a minister of fine arts, and if not that then the sculptural quality of the best novels and the fictional quality of the best sculpture, and if not that then the influence on British life of the fox-trot, and if not that then the prospects of bringing modern poets home to the largest public by means of the board schools, and if not that then the evil effects of the twin great London institutions for teaching music upon the individualities of the young geniuses entrusted to them, and if not that the part played by the most earnest amateurs in the destruction of opera, and if not that the total eclipse of Beethoven, Brahms and Wagner since the efflorescence of the Russian Ballet.  And always there ran like a flame through the conversations the hot breath of a passionate intention to make Britain artistic in the eyes of the civilised world.