Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/56

50 with that dreadful meal, with the sour soup, the stale fish, the dry hut Siberian pheasant, the thin-set ice; they drank champagne with it. All the while Albert Amsted Pudleigh gurgled and leered at her with a tireless energy, and she minced back at him. Their horrible, undisguised satisfaction with the food, with the plushed and mirrored room, and with one another was as revolting a sight as I have ever seen. As a rule I find the joys of the vulgar infinitely pathetic; the joy of this pair, on the top of the Siberian pheasant, made me loathe the human race I was about to benefit.

We had eaten our dinner, or rather as much of it as the necessity of being fit for our work and our strong sense of our duty to Humanity could thrust down our throats, and were trying to soothe our outraged and clamorous stomachs with some powerful Trichinopoly cheroots I happily chanced to have with me, when we saw Pudleigh paying his bill, paid ours and came out of the restaurant before them. We came out of it with every morsel of human kindliness wrenched from our hearts. We were rather beasts of prey than philanthropists; and I saw Chelubai bare his teeth in the snarl of a tiger, a man-eater, as he felt in his hip pocket to assure himself that the sand-bag was really there.

We crossed the road and watched our enemies come out and walk along the street They insulted