in the ocean, 'good Christian souls,' but against
humanity and human nature!" Bingham looked from one to the other of his
listeners. "Until now, the only people we have taken quite seriously are
the very well dressed and the--well, the undressed. The two classes
overlap continually. But now we've got to take everybody seriously; we
are going to have a Democracy. Human nature has got a new tool, and the
tool is Democracy. The new tool is to be put into the same foolish old
hands, and we shall very soon discover what we shall call 'the sins of
Democracy.' What is fundamentally wrong with us is what apparently we
can't help: it's that we are ourselves, that we are human beings."
Bingham smiled into his plate. "We adopt Christianity, and because we
are human beings we make it intellectually rigid and morally sloppy. We
are patronising Democracy, and we shall make it intellectually rigid and
morally sloppy too--if we don't take care. Everything we handle becomes
intellectually rigid and morally sloppy. And yet we still fancy that, if
only we could get hold of the right tools, our hands would do the right
work."

"The Reconstruction of Human Nature is what you are demanding," said the
Warden.

"Yes, that's what we want," sighed Bingham. "When we have got rid of the
Huns, we must begin to think about it."

"If you saw the children I have seen, Mr. Bingham," said May, quietly,
"you would want to begin at once, and I think you would be hopeful."

There was on the Warden's face a sudden passionate assent that Bingham
detected.

"All men," said Bingham, leaning back in his chair and regarding his two
listeners with veiled attention--"all men like to hear a woman say
sweet, tender, hopeful things, even if they don't believe them. As for
myself, Mrs. Dashwood, I admit that your 'higher optimism' haunts me too
at times; at rare times when, for instance, the weather in Oxford is dry
and bright and bracing."

If he had for a moment doubted it since the afternoon at the Hardings',
Bingham was now sure, as sure as a man can be of what is unconfessed in
words, that between this man and woman sitting at the table with him was
some secret sensitive interest that was not friendship.

How did this conviction affect Bingham and Bingham's spirits? It
certainly did not put a stop to his flow of talk. Rather, he talked the
more; he was even more sweetly cynical and amiably scintillating than
usual. If his heart was wounded, and he himsel