haps true, that I
want something to hit. It's a suggestion.'

'So you think you might as well hit me?' said Birkin.

'You? Well! Perhaps--! In a friendly kind of way, of course.'

'Quite!' said Birkin, bitingly.

Gerald stood leaning back against the mantel-piece. He looked down at
Birkin, and his eyes flashed with a sort of terror like the eyes of a
stallion, that are bloodshot and overwrought, turned glancing backwards
in a stiff terror.

'I fell that if I don't watch myself, I shall find myself doing
something silly,' he said.

'Why not do it?' said Birkin coldly.

Gerald listened with quick impatience. He kept glancing down at Birkin,
as if looking for something from the other man.

'I used to do some Japanese wrestling,' said Birkin. 'A Jap lived in
the same house with me in Heidelberg, and he taught me a little. But I
was never much good at it.'

'You did!' exclaimed Gerald. 'That's one of the things I've never ever
seen done. You mean jiu-jitsu, I suppose?'

'Yes. But I am no good at those things--they don't interest me.'

'They don't? They do me. What's the start?'

'I'll show you what I can, if you like,' said Birkin.

'You will?' A queer, smiling look tightened Gerald's face for a moment,
as he said, 'Well, I'd like it very much.'

'Then we'll try jiu-jitsu. Only you can't do much in a starched shirt.'

'Then let us strip, and do it properly. Hold a minute--' He rang the
bell, and waited for the butler.

'Bring a couple of sandwiches and a syphon,' he said to the man, 'and
then don't trouble me any more tonight--or let anybody else.'

The man went. Gerald turned to Birkin with his eyes lighted.

'And you used to wrestle with a Jap?' he said. 'Did you strip?'

'Sometimes.'

'You did! What was he like then, as a wrestler?'

'Good, I believe. I am no judge. He was very quick and slippery and
full of electric fire. It is a remarkable thing, what a curious sort of
fluid force they seem to have in them, those people not like a human
grip--like a polyp--'

Gerald nodded.

'I should imagine so,' he said, 'to look at them. They repel me,
rather.'

'Repel and attract, both. They are very repulsive when they are cold,
and they look grey. But when they are hot and roused, there is a
definite attraction--a curious kind of full electric fluid--like eels.'

'Well--yes--probably.'

The man brought in the tray and set it down.

'Don't come in any more,' said Gerald.

The door closed.

'We