“There is no woman in that!” mused the baronet.  “He would have ridden back as hard as he went,” reflected this profound scientific humanist, “had there been a woman in it.  He would shun vast expanses, and seek shade, concealment, solitude.  The desire for distances betokens emptiness and undirected hunger:  when the heart is possessed by an image we fly to wood and forest, like the guilty.”

Adrian’s report accused his pupil of an extraordinary access of cynicism.

“Exactly,” said the baronet.  “As I foresaw.  At this period an insatiate appetite is accompanied by a fastidious palate.  Nothing but the quintessences of existence, and those in exhaustless supplies, will satisfy this craving, which is not to be satisfied!  Hence his bitterness.  Life can furnish no food fitting for him.  The strength and purity of his energies have reached to an almost divine height, and roam through the Inane.  Poetry, love, and such-like, are the drugs earth has to offer to high natures, as she offers to low ones debauchery.  ’Tis a sign, this sourness, that he is subject to none of the empiricisms that are afloat.  Now to keep him clear of them!”

The Titans had an easier task in storming Olympus.  As yet, however, it could not be said that Sir Austin’s System had failed.  On the contrary, it had reared a youth, handsome, intelligent, well-bred, and, observed the ladies, with acute emphasis, innocent.  Where, they asked, was such another young man to be found?

“Oh!” said Lady Blandish to Sir Austin, “if men could give their hands to women unsoiled—­how different would many a marriage be!  She will be a happy girl who calls Richard husband.”

“Happy, indeed!” was the baronet’s caustic ejaculation.  “But where shall I meet one equal to him, and his match?”

“I was innocent when I was a girl,” said the lady.

Sir Austin bowed a reserved opinion.

“Do you think no girls innocent?”

Sir Austin gallantly thought them all so.

“No, that you know they are not,” said the lady, stamping.  “But they are more innocent than boys, I am sure.”

“Because of their education, madam.  You see now what a youth can be.  Perhaps, when my System is published, or rather—­to speak more humbly—­ when it is practised, the balance may be restored, and we shall have virtuous young men.”

“It’s too late for poor me to hope for a husband from one of them,” said the lady, pouting and laughing.

“It is never too late for beauty to waken love,” returned the baronet, and they trifled a little.  They were approaching Daphne’s Bower, which they entered, and sat there to taste the coolness of a descending midsummer day.

The baronet seemed in a humour for dignified fooling; the lady for serious converse.

“I shall believe again in Arthur’s knights,” she said.  “When I was a girl I dreamed of one.”

“And he was in quest of the San Greal?”