values. All these beautiful, useful and convenient things would assist
him to greater achievement and finer virtue, but it would not be the
same achievement and virtue that would emerge if he had stayed down in
the arena and lodged with the gladiators in the back-streets. It
couldn't be. Perhaps the men who could get the most out of wealthy
environment are those like my brother, who simply care nothing for
achievement or virtue as such, who live unconsciously for themselves and
never have any sense of interior values, as I call them, at all. Their
lives are like an exquisite design of nymphs and fauns and satyrs on an
Etruscan jar--beautiful, rounded, complete. And inside the jar is
nothing but a handful of rubbish....

"So I reflected as I sat in that deep chair and watched the wood-fire
burning in the bronze grate. A silent man in a black suit came in and
put a decanter and siphon at my elbow and went out again. Suddenly a
phrase I had heard at sea came back to me, sharp and resonant. I was
talking to old Fred Tateham, the mate, one day, he who had had a
collision and lost his command, and he had been telling me his plans for
his younger boy. He was going to put him in his brother's office. 'You
know,' said he, 'I've a very successful brother.' I forget what this
successful brother had succeeded in--some genteel profession like
accountancy or attorney. It struck me as amusing at the time, a man
boasting of the possession of a successful brother, just as he might
proclaim his pride in a clever child or a fine garden or a good terrier.
And now the phrase came back as one I could use myself. I had 'a very
successful brother.' To confirm this whimsical notion, the successful
brother entered the room in evening dress, with a band of crape on the
arm and a black tie. He was irreproachable as he stood on the rug
snapping black amber buttons into his cuffs and settling his
shirt-front. He was so irreproachable that I lost my feeling of
discomfort and inferiority in his presence. He leaned his head on the
carved stone frame of the fire-place and stared at the flames
thoughtfully.

"'You live here alone?' I asked, and he nodded.

"'For long?' He shook his head. 'I never stop long in digs,' he
remarked, 'I get sick of them, don't you know, and try fresh.'

"'Where's Gladys?' I inquired, almost without knowing what I said. I was
as surprised as he was at such temerity. For an instant he did not know
what I meant. 'Gladys,' s