Jaffery looked at her ruefully.  Beneath those dark pools of eyes lay the spirituality that made her a mystery so sacred.  He, great hulking fellow, was a gross lump of clay.  Ideals?

“I don’t suppose I have any,” said he.

“But you must.  Everybody has, to a certain extent.”

“Well, to ride straight and tell the truth—­like the ancient Persians, I suppose it was the Persians—­anyway it’s a sort of rough code I’ve got.”

“Have you read Nietzsche?” she asked suddenly.

He frowned perplexedly.  “Nietzsche—­that’s the mad superman chap, isn’t it?  No.  I’ve not read a word.”

“I do wish you would.  You’ll find him so exhilarating.  You might possibly agree with a lot of what he says.  I don’t.  But he sets you thinking.”

She sketched her somewhat prim conception of the Nietzschean philosophy, and after listening to it in dumb wonder, he promised to carry out her wishes.  So, when I came down to my library that evening dressed for dinner, I found him, still in morning clothes, with “Thus Spake Zarathustra” on his knees, and a bewildered expression on his face.

“Have you read this, Hilary?” he asked.

“Yes,” said I.

“Understand it?”

“More or less.”

“Gosh!” said he, shutting the book, “and I suppose Doria understands it too, or she wouldn’t have recommended it.  But,” he rose ponderously and looked down on me with serious eyes—­“what the Hell is it all about?”

I drew out my watch.  “The five seconds that you have before rushing up-stairs to dress,” said I, “don’t give me adequate time to expound a philosophic system.”

Now if Adrian or I had talked to Jaffery about soul-progression and the Will to Power and suggested that he was missing the essentials of life, we should have been met with bellows of rude and profane derision.  I don’t believe he had even roughly considered what kind of an individuality he had, still less enquired into the state of his spiritual being.  But the flip of a girl he professed so much to despise came along and reduced him to a condition of helpless introspection.  I cannot say that it lasted very long.  Psychology and metaphysics and aesthetics lay outside Jaffery’s sphere.  But while seeing no harm in his own simple creed of straight-riding and truth-speaking, he added to it an unshakable faith in Doria’s intellectual and spiritual superiority.  On his first meeting with her he had disclaimed the subtler mental qualities, videlicet his similitude of the bumble-bee; now, however, he went further, declaring himself, to a subrident host, to be a chuckle-headed ass, only fit to herd with savages.  He would listen, with childlike envy, to Adrian, glib of tongue, exchanging with Doria the shibboleths of the Higher Life.  He had been considerably impressed by Adrian as the author of a successful novel; but Adrian as a co-treader of the stars with Doria, appeared to him in the light of an immortal.