seems very extraordinary."

"You're like Scogan," cried Denis bitterly. "You regard me as a specimen
for an anthropologist. Well, I suppose I am."

"No, no," she protested, and drew in her skirt with a gesture that
indicated that he was to sit down beside her. He sat down. "Why can't
you just take things for granted and as they come?" she asked. "It's so
much simpler."

"Of course it is," said Denis. "But it's a lesson to be learnt
gradually. There are the twenty tons of ratiocination to be got rid of
first."

"I've always taken things as they come," said Anne. "It seems so
obvious. One enjoys the pleasant things, avoids the nasty ones. There's
nothing more to be said."

"Nothing--for you. But, then, you were born a pagan; I am trying
laboriously to make myself one. I can take nothing for granted, I can
enjoy nothing as it comes along. Beauty, pleasure, art, women--I have
to invent an excuse, a justification for everything that's delightful.
Otherwise I can't enjoy it with an easy conscience. I make up a little
story about beauty and pretend that it has something to do with truth
and goodness. I have to say that art is the process by which one
reconstructs the divine reality out of chaos. Pleasure is one of the
mystical roads to union with the infinite--the ecstasies of drinking,
dancing, love-making. As for women, I am perpetually assuring myself
that they're the broad highway to divinity. And to think that I'm only
just beginning to see through the silliness of the whole thing! It's
incredible to me that anyone should have escaped these horrors."

"It's still more incredible to me," said Anne, "that anyone should have
been a victim to them. I should like to see myself believing that men
are the highway to divinity." The amused malice of her smile planted two
little folds on either side of her mouth, and through their half-closed
lids her eyes shone with laughter. "What you need, Denis, is a nice
plump young wife, a fixed income, and a little congenial but regular
work."

"What I need is you." That was what he ought to have retorted, that
was what he wanted passionately to say. He could not say it. His desire
fought against his shyness. "What I need is you." Mentally he shouted
the words, but not a sound issued from his lips. He looked at her
despairingly. Couldn't she see what was going on inside him? Couldn't
she understand? "What I need is you." He would say it, he would--he
would.

"I think I shall go an