“What?  Going to the dentist?”

“Exactly—­that is, not at all.”

“Well, what’s up?  Some intellectual business, lecture on Walter Scott, or Dickens, or one of the other Johnnies that are so popular just now?”

“No.  I have a—­a small gathering at home this afternoon.

“All right.  Then I’ll pop round on you—­say five o’clock.”

“No, Bob, no, I can’t say that.  I’m very sorry, but I can’t possibly say that.”

“Right you are.  Too clever for me, I s’pose.  Look me up at the Tintack to-night then—­any time after ten.”

“If I can, Bob, I will,” replied the Prophet, with impressive uncertainty, “I say if I can I will do so.”

“Done!  If you can’t, then I’m not to expect you.  That it?”

“That is it—­precisely.”

“Good-bye, Niddy, old girl.  Keep your pecker up.  By the way, if you want a real good tune for a Charity sing-song, a real rouser, try ’Nancy Lee.’”

He was gone, humming vigorously that new-fangled favourite.

“Sit down, Mr. Vivian,” said Lady Enid, looking her right size.  “We’ve got a lot to say to one another.”

“I have to be home at five,” replied the Prophet, abstractedly.

Lady Enid begin to appear a trifle thin.

“Why?  How tiresome!  I didn’t think you really meant it.”

“It is very, very tiresome.”

He spoke with marked uneasiness, and remained standing with the air of one in readiness for the punctual call of the hangman.

“What is it?” continued Lady Enid, with her usual inquisitiveness.

“I have, as I said, a—­a small gathering at home at that hour,” said the Prophet, repeating his formula morosely.

“A gathering—­what of?”

“People—­persons, that is.”

“What—­a party?”

“Two parties,” replied the Prophet, instinctively giving Mr. Sagittarius and Madame their undoubted due.  “Two.”

“Two parties at the same time—­and in the afternoon!  How very odd!”

“They will look very odd, very—­in Berkeley Square,” responded the Prophet, in a tone of considerable dejection.  “I don’t know, I’m sure, what Mr. Ferdinand and Gustavus will think.  Still I’ve given strict orders that they are to be let in.  What else could I do?”

He gazed at Lady Enid in a demanding manner.

“What else could I possibly do under the circumstances?” he repeated.

“Sit down, dear Mr. Vivian,” she answered, with her peculiar Scotch lassie seductiveness, “and tell me, your sincere friend, what the circumstances are.”

Unluckily her curiosity had led her to overdo persuasion.  That cooing interpolation of “your sincere friend”—­too strongly honeyed—­suddenly recalled the Prophet to the fact that Lady Enid was not, and could never be, his confidante in the matter that obsessed him.  He therefore sat down, but with an abrupt air of indefinite social liveliness, and exclaimed, not unlike Mr. Robert Green,—­