on knew it, they were. Einstein's theory
as to space and light would be discussed, with varying degrees of
intelligence, most of them low, in many a cottage, many a club, many a
train. There would be columns about it in the Sunday papers, with little
Sunday remarks to the effect that the finiteness of space did not limit
the infinity of God. Scientists have naif minds where God is concerned;
they see him, if at all, in terms of space.

Anyhow, there it was. People were interested not only in divorce,
suicide, and murder, but in light and space, undulations and gravitation.
That was rather jolly, for that was true romance. It gave one more hope.
Even though people might like their science in cheap and absurd tabloid
form, they did like it. The Potter press exulted in scientific
discoveries made easy, but it was better than not exulting in them at
all. For these were things as they were, and therefore the things that
mattered. This was the satisfying world of hard, difficult facts, without
slush and without sentiment. This was the world where truth was sought
for its own sake.

'When I see truth, do I seek truth
Only that I may things denote,
And, rich by striving, deck my youth
As with a vain, unusual coat?'

Nearly every one in the ordinary world did that, if indeed they ever
concerned themselves with truth at all. And some scientists too, perhaps,
but not most. Scientists and scholars and explorers--they were the
people. They were the world's students, the learners, the discoverers.
They didn't talk till they knew....

Rain had begun to drizzle. At the corner of Marylebone Road and Baker
Street there was a lit coffee-stall. A group clustered about it; a
policeman drinking oxo, his waterproof cape shining with wet; two
taxi-cab drivers having coffee and buns; a girl in an evening cloak, with
a despatch case, eating biscuits.

Gideon passed by without stopping. A hand touched him on the arm, and a
painted face looked up into his, murmuring something. Gideon, who had a
particular dislike for paint on the human face, and, in general, for
persons who looked and behaved like this person, looked away from her
and scowled.

'I only wanted,' she explained, 'a cup of coffee ...' and he gave her
sixpence, though he didn't believe her.

Horrible, these women were; ugly; dirty; loathsome; so that one wondered
why on earth any one liked them (some people obviously did like them, or
they wouldn't be there), and yet, detesta