By the time Denis returned to the grotto a more exuberant and incoherent tone had been generated among the guests.  He was not pleased.  He felt inclined to be stern.  A number of reprobates from the Club had dropped in, and Keith, whom he meant to keep straight for one night at least, was saying silly things and giving himself away.  So was the excellent Mr. Richards.

“This is a good island,” observed that gentleman.  “We discourse like sages and drink like swine.  Peace with Honour! . . .  How that old Jew took our English measure, eh?  How he laughed in his sleeve at our infatuation for a phrase like that.  Peace with Honour!  The sort of claptrap that makes a man feel so jolly comfortable inside, so damned satisfied with everything like after a good deed.  And that sentimental primrose business.  Dizzy as flower-expert!  What cared he for primroses?  Votes and moneybags was what he was after.  But he knew the British Public.  And that accounts for the pious domestic button-hole.  Who ever heard of a Jew telling the difference between a primrose and any other kind of rose?  They’re not such blasted fools.”

“Excuse me,” said Keith, rising from his seat in an afflatus of inspiration.  “Excuse me.  I know the difference.  It is primarily a question of nutrition.  Glucose!  I am a great believer in glucose.  Because, even if it could be proved that the monks of Palaiokastron stripped the vine of its leaves and thereby hastened the maturing of the grape without reducing its natural supply of sugar—­”

“You don’t shine,” interrupted Denis, “when you talk like that.”

“Because even if this could be proved, which I greatly doubt, yet nothing on earth will make me believe that glucose is otherwise than beneficial to vegetation.  Because—­”

“Do sit down, Keith.  You are monopolizing the conversation.”

“Because the glucose resides within that verdant foliage like truth in her well, like the oyster within its pearl.  The monks of Palaiokastron—­they got it straight from Noah.  I am a great believer in glucose.  Which is absurd.  Because—­”

“Oh, shut up!  You are making a perfect exhibition of yourself.  Can’t you oblige me, for once in the way?”

Denis was growing seriously alarmed for the reputation of his friend.  He had changed of late; he was beginning to know his own mind.  He meant to put a stop to this humiliating scene.  As the other, regardless of his pleadings, continued to babble dithyrambic nonsense concerning glucose and self-fertilization and artificial manures and inflorescence and Assyrian bas-reliefs and Stilton cheese, he suddenly gripped his arm and pulled him, with a crash, into his chair.

“Sit down, you double-distilled owl!”

This was the first virile achievement of his young life, and directed to a worthy end.  For it was obvious to the meanest intelligence that Mr. Keith was considerably drunk.  Too surprised to utter a word of protest, the orator paused in his declamation, beaming blandly at nobody in particular.  Then he remarked, in quite a subdued tone of voice: