pigs grow where only one grew before. The spectacle of so much
crude life is refreshing."

"I'm glad to hear you say so," Gombauld broke in warmly. "Lots of life:
that's what we want. I like pullulation; everything ought to increase
and multiply as hard as it can."

Gombauld grew lyrical. Everybody ought to have children--Anne ought to
have them, Mary ought to have them--dozens and dozens. He emphasised his
point by thumping with his walking-stick on the bull's leather flanks.
Mr. Scogan ought to pass on his intelligence to little Scogans, and
Denis to little Denises. The bull turned his head to see what was
happening, regarded the drumming stick for several seconds, then turned
back again satisfied, it seemed, that nothing was happening. Sterility
was odious, unnatural, a sin against life. Life, life, and still more
life. The ribs of the placid bull resounded.

Standing with his back against the farmyard pump, a little apart, Denis
examined the group. Gombauld, passionate and vivacious, was its centre.
The others stood round, listening--Henry Wimbush, calm and polite
beneath his grey bowler; Mary, with parted lips and eyes that shone with
the indignation of a convinced birth-controller. Anne looked on through
half-shut eyes, smiling; and beside her stood Mr. Scogan, bolt upright
in an attitude of metallic rigidity that contrasted strangely with that
fluid grace of hers which even in stillness suggested a soft movement.

Gombauld ceased talking, and Mary, flushed and outraged, opened her
mouth to refute him. But she was too slow. Before she could utter a
word Mr. Scogan's fluty voice had pronounced the opening phrases of a
discourse. There was no hope of getting so much as a word in edgeways;
Mary had perforce to resign herself.

"Even your eloquence, my dear Gombauld," he was saying--"even your
eloquence must prove inadequate to reconvert the world to a belief in
the delights of mere multiplication. With the gramophone, the cinema,
and the automatic pistol, the goddess of Applied Science has presented
the world with another gift, more precious even than these--the means of
dissociating love from propagation. Eros, for those who wish it, is now
an entirely free god; his deplorable associations with Lucina may be
broken at will. In the course of the next few centuries, who knows?
the world may see a more complete severance. I look forward to it
optimistically. Where the great Erasmus Darwin and Miss Anna Seward,
Sw