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“And if this fought-for climax _is_ ever reached and science, creeping along the path of experiment, so invades the realm of Nature that a blue chrysanthemum or A Yellow Aster can be produced at will, the question still remains, has Nature been made more beautiful thereby?”
PRINTED AT NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND) BY H. C. A. THIEME OF NIMEGUEN (HOLLAND) AND TALBOT HOUSE, ARUNDEL STREET LONDON, W.C.
CHAPTER XVIII. 1 CHAPTER XIX. 19 CHAPTER XX. 33 CHAPTER XXI. 59 CHAPTER XXII. 75 CHAPTER XXIII. 91 CHAPTER XXIV. 109 CHAPTER XXV. 122 CHAPTER XXVI. 133 CHAPTER XXVII. 161 CHAPTER XXVIII. 174 CHAPTER XXIX. 191 CHAPTER XXX. 203
“TO look at the fellow one would never give him credit for half the grit he has,” thought Strange as he glanced round for a cab at the street corner. “If I had money I should send him to Paris,” he went on as soon as he had settled himself comfortably, “the Kensington methods are no manner of use to him. It’s the deuce of a shame too, that he has to attempt finished work for a living when he should be swatting over the primaries; and that colour mania—that will get chronic and overgrow him, and then God help him!”
As it happened Lady Mary was at home and quite wide-awake. As a rule this was not the case until much later in the day, but just now various things combined to keep off sleep.
When Strange was announced, she was sitting well screened from the small bright fire, gazing in soft meditation at her plump white hands, with the corners of her mouth slightly drawn downwards, and her smooth round forehead wrinkled up in a way that would have gone to the heart of a stone to see in such a picture of comfort as she was made to be.
“Humphrey!” she exclaimed, making a vain try at a spring and flopping down again limply, “Humphrey!”
“Myself and no other,” said Strange, receiving her kiss cheerfully, and settling himself into a chair after he had shaken it to see if it would bear. “I needn’t ask you how you are, Aunt Moll, you look just as you always did, like a catkin.”