n the Rational State?" Denis drowsily
inquired from under his shading hand.

Mr. Scogan looked at him for a moment in silence. "It's difficult to see
where you would fit in," he said at last. "You couldn't do manual work;
you're too independent and unsuggestible to belong to the larger Herd;
you have none of the characteristics required in a Man of Faith. As for
the Directing Intelligences, they will have to be marvellously clear and
merciless and penetrating." He paused and shook his head. "No, I can see
no place for you; only the lethal chamber."

Deeply hurt, Denis emitted the imitation of a loud Homeric laugh. "I'm
getting sunstroke here," he said, and got up.

Mr. Scogan followed his example, and they walked slowly away down the
narrow path, brushing the blue lavender flowers in their passage. Denis
pulled a sprig of lavender and sniffed at it; then some dark leaves of
rosemary that smelt like incense in a cavernous church. They passed a
bed of opium poppies, dispetaled now; the round, ripe seedheads were
brown and dry--like Polynesian trophies, Denis thought; severed heads
stuck on poles. He liked the fancy enough to impart it to Mr. Scogan.

"Like Polynesian trophies..." Uttered aloud, the fancy seemed less
charming and significant than it did when it first occurred to him.

There was a silence, and in a growing wave of sound the whir of the
reaping machines swelled up from the fields beyond the garden and then
receded into a remoter hum.

"It is satisfactory to think," said Mr. Scogan, as they strolled slowly
onward, "that a multitude of people are toiling in the harvest fields in
order that we may talk of Polynesia. Like every other good thing in this
world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however,
it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay. Let us be
duly thankful for that, my dear Denis--duly thankful," he repeated, and
knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

Denis was not listening. He had suddenly remembered Anne. She was with
Gombauld--alone with him in his studio. It was an intolerable thought.

"Shall we go and pay a call on Gombauld?" he suggested carelessly. "It
would be amusing to see what he's doing now."

He laughed inwardly to think how furious Gombauld would be when he saw
them arriving.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Gombauld was by no means so furious at their apparition as Denis had
hoped and expected he would be. Indeed, he was rather pleased than
annoyed when