hat's
why I welcome it--I don't care one little damn about your
individual--let him be sacrificed every time for the general wisdom.
Your Duchess, she was good for her age. Now she is against progress. She
vanishes. That crowd of to-night has swept her away.... There'll be a
chaos here for a time--people like the Ruddards will mix things up; a
woman like Mrs. Strode will destroy as many good people as she can. But
the time will come; out of that crowd that we got into to-night a world,
ruled by brain, by common sense, by understanding, not by sentiment and
confusion, will arise.... May I not be with the good God!"

"'Sentiment and confusion,'" said Christopher, smiling. "That's me, I
suppose."

"Well, you _are_ sentimental," said Brun. "You're stuffed with it."

"Do you yourself ..." asked Christopher, "is there no one--no one in the
world--who matters to you?"

"Nobody," said Brun. "No one in the world. I think I like you better
than anybody; you're the honestest man I know and yet one of the most
wrong-headed. Yes, I like you very much; but it would not be true to say
that it would leave any great blank in my life if you were to die.
Women! Yes, there have been women! But--thank the good God! for the
moment only. The Heart--no--The Brain--yes----"

"Well, then," said Christopher, "that's all clear enough. It isn't very
wonderful that we differ. People are to me everything. Love the only
power in the world to make change, to work miracles; I don't mean only
sensual love, or even sexual love, but simply the love of one human
being for another, the love that leads to thinking more of your
neighbour than yourself--self-denial.

"Self-denial; the only curb for your Tiger, Brun. I've been watching it
in a piece of private history, all this last year and a half. There
might have been the most horrible mess; self-denial saved it all the
time. You'll say that all this is so vague and loose that it's worth
nothing."

"Not at all," said Brun politely. "Go ahead."

"Well, then, the reason why I, old-fashioned and Philistine as I am,
hail the passing of the Grand Duke with joy--and I cared for the old
woman, mind you--is just this. I see some chance at last for the plain
man--not the clever man, or the especially spiritual man or the wealthy
man--but simply the ordinary man. When I say Brotherhood I don't mean
anything to do with associations or meetings or rules--Simply that I
believe in an age when a man's neighbour wi