odern
literature. They are our colossi--we others fuss and potter about under
their huge limbs like pygmies."

"Speak for yourself, Charles," said Tyne coolly. "I may not be a
colossus, but I have wings. Gauzy, iridescent, little vans maybe, but
sufficient to lift me. I am not what sportsmen call a 'heavyweight' of
literature--but I can coruscate, which your colossi cannot. And I am not
sure that I don't prefer fireflies to eagles."

"Which do you think greater--Tolstoy or Dostoievsky?" Sophy slipped in,
before Ferrars could launch a sarcasm.

"Oh, Tolstoy, Tolstoy ... by all means," murmured Tyne.

"Which do _you_ think greater?" said Sophy to Amaldi.

"Well...." Amaldi reflected an instant. "When Tolstoy regards the human
race, one feels that he sees it made up of little Tolstoys. When
Dostoievsky looks inward--it is as if he saw all humanity in himself--in
Dostoievsky."

"Capital!" cried Ferrars. Sophy looked at Amaldi, pleased at hearing her
own conviction so well put into words. Tyne regarded the young man
dreamily.

"How charming is the multiplicity of opinion," he then said. "If I ever
sacrificed it would be to the goddess of Variety. Now to me, Tolstoy is
by far the greater figure of the two."

Ferrars had begun to talk to the woman on his right and was not
listening any longer. The women on the left and right of Tyne and Amaldi
were eagerly attentive.

"Why?" asked several voices at once.

"Because Tolstoy is the greatest Immoralist of his time," said Tyne
serenely.

"Oh! Oh!" came several voices.

"He is immoral in spirit where others are only immoral in fact,"
continued the poet, quite unmoved. "Never was there so irreligious, so
immoral a spectacle as that Titan in the throes of religion. For this
religion of his violates and thwarts every natural instinct and desire
of his pagan nature. To deny one's true nature is irreligion. To be
egotistically selfless is the paradox of the inferno. Besides, is there
a greater sin against genius than to worship the commonplace? Now virtue
is the norm--the level convention invented by civilised man. The crime
of virtuous genius is that it becomes null. The cult of virtue is the
eighth deadly sin--in a creative mind. Fancy a virtuous Creator!"

He laughed suddenly into the faces which seemed not to have decided
whether to look shocked or to smile.

Sophy turned to Amaldi. But try as she might, she could not overcome the
_gene_ cast upon her by those host