walk. Are you sure you might not become a good clergyman if you had a
few centuries to do it in?

HASLAM. Oh, theres nothing much the matter with _me_: it's quite easy to
be a decent parson. It's the Church that chokes me off. I couldnt stick
it for nine hundred years. I should chuck it. You know, sometimes, when
the bishop, who is the most priceless of fossils, lets off something
more than usually out-of-date, the bird starts in my garden.

FRANKLYN. The bird?

HASLAM. Oh yes. Theres a bird there that keeps on singing 'Stick it or
chuck it: stick it or chuck it'--just like that--for an hour on end in
the spring. I wish my father had found some other shop for me.

_The parlor maid comes back._

THE PARLOR MAID. Any letters for the post, sir?

FRANKLYN. These. [_He proffers a basket of letters. She comes to the
table and takes them_].

HASLAM [_to the maid_] Have you told Mr Barnabas yet?

THE PARLOR MAID [_flinching a little_] No, sir.

FRANKLYN. Told me what?

HASLAM. She is going to leave you?

FRANKLYN. Indeed? I'm sorry. Is it our fault, Mr Haslam?

HASLAM. Not a bit. She is jolly well off here.

THE PARLOR MAID [_reddening_] I have never denied it, sir: I couldnt ask
for a better place. But I have only one life to live; and I maynt get
a second chance. Excuse me, sir; but the letters must go to catch the
post. [_She goes out with the letters._]

_The two brothers look inquiringly at Haslam._

HASLAM. Silly girl! Going to marry a village woodman and live in a hovel
with him and a lot of kids tumbling over one another, just because the
fellow has poetic-looking eyes and a moustache.

CONRAD [_demurring_] She said it was because she had only one life.

HASLAM. Same thing, poor girl! The fellow persuaded her to chuck it; and
when she marries him she'll have to stick it. Rotten state of things, I
call it.

CONRAD. You see, she hasnt time to find out what life really means. She
has to die before she knows.

HASLAM [_agreeably_] Thats it.

FRANKLYN. She hasnt time to form a well-instructed conscience.

HASLAM [_still more cheerfully_] Quite.

FRANKLYN. It goes deeper. She hasnt time to form a genuine conscience
at all. Some romantic points of honor and a few conventions. A world
without conscience: that is the horror of our condition.

HASLAM [_beaming_] Simply fatuous. [_Rising_] Well, I suppose I'd better
be going. It's most awfully good of you to put up with my calling.

CONRAD [_in his fo