ry and company
the affair apparently fell through."

"He was, as you say, a model of discretion."

"Ah. There are records? Well, you were justified in destroying them."

"It is hard to understand."

"To understand whom--Sir Jacques or the girl? You cannot mean the girl.
A man who reaches the age of thirty without understanding women is like
a bluebottle who devotes a summer morning to an endeavour to fly through
a pane of glass."

"You speak like an early Roman."

"What more admirable model? Consider the Roman institutions; perfect
sanitation and slavery. We abolish one and adopt the other, with the
result that a healthy democracy has swallowed us up. The early Romans
were sages."

"You have no sympathy for Sir Jacques' victims?"

"Except where the chivalrous warriors of Prussia are concerned, and with
other rare exceptions, I never think of women as victims, Mr. Mario."

"Not even in the case of an aged hypocrite who probably posed as the
Platonic friend?"

"Platonic friendship is impossible up to sixty-five. The most ignorant
girl knows it to be so, for every woman has hereditary memory."

"Your creed is a harsh one. You take no count of snares and pitfalls."

"Snares and pitfalls cannot be set upon the highroad."

"And how should you define this highroad?"

"As the path selected by our unspoiled instincts. It is ignorance posing
as education that first blunts those instincts, dogma disguised as
religion and hypocrisy misnamed 'good behaviour.'"

"You would allow instinct to go unfettered?"

"Provided it remains unspoiled. But first I would sweep the world of
lies."

"Then you think the world ready for the truth?"

"I know that the world waits for it."

"Do you think the world will recognise it?"

"In part the world has already recognised it. We lived in an age which
was eternally demanding 'proofs'--and which rejected them when they were
offered. But the great catastrophe which has overwhelmed us has adjusted
our perspective. Few of us to-day _dare_ to doubt the immortality of the
soul. We failed to recognise joy as a proof of our survival after death,
but we cannot reject the teaching of sorrow."

"Love and friendship, of course, are proofs not only of immortality, but
of pre-existence and the survival of the individual."

"And can you make the disciples of the clap-trap which passes for
religion believe this, Mr. Mario?"

"I propose to try. But the task is hard. There are pieces difficu