Vegetarianism in the Drawing-Room

THE Company that assembled to listen to the Prophet of the Moon, on the / next occasion of his delivering any formal address, was much more select / than the comparatively mixed and middle-class society of the Simple / Souls. Miss Browning and her sister, Mrs. Mackintosh, were indeed / present; for Lord Ivywood had practically engaged them both as private / secretaries, and kept them pretty busy, too. There was also Mr. Leveson, / because Lord Ivywood believed in his organizing power; and also Mr. / Hibbs, because Mr. Leveson believed in his political judgment, whenever / he could discover what it was. Mr. Leveson had straight, dark hair, and / looked nervous. Mr. Hibbs had straight, fair hair, and also looked / nervous. But the rest of the company were more of Ivywood's own world, / or the world of high finance with which it mixes both here and on the / continent. Lord Ivywood welcomed, with something approaching to warmth, / a distinguished foreign diplomatist, who was, indeed, none other than / that silent German representative who had sat beside him in that last / conference on the Island of the Olives. Dr. Gluck was no longer in his / quiet, black suit, but wore an ornate, diplomatic uniform with a sword / and Prussian, Austrian or Turkish Orders; for he was going on from / Ivywood to a function at Court. But his curl of red lips, his screw of / black mustache, and his unanswering almond eyes had no more changed than / the face of a wax figure in a barber's shop window.

The Prophet had also effected an improvement in his dress. When he had / orated on the sands his costume, except for the fez, was the shabby but / respectable costume of any rather unsuccessful English clerk. But now / that he had come among aristocrats who petted their souls as they did / their senses, there must be no such incongruity. He must be a proper, / fresh-picked oriental tulip or lotus. So-he wore long, flowing robes of / white, relieved here and there by flame-coloured threads of tracery, and / round his head was a turban of a kind of pale golden green. He had to / look as if he had come flying across Europe on the magic carpet, or / fallen a moment before from his paradise in the moon.