to do your will ... oh, lots of things!"

Gilbert had read some of Henry's novel, and he now began to talk about
it.

"You turn on the Slop-tap too often," he said. "Quinny, my son, you're a
clever little chap, but you're frightfully sloppy. I've read a lot more
of your novel...."

"Yes?" said Henry, nervously anxious to hear his criticism.

"Slop!" Gilbert continued. "Just slop, Quinny! Women aren't like lumps
of dough that a baker punches into any shape he likes, and they aren't
sticks of barley sugar...."

"No, they aren't," Roger interrupted. "Wait till you see my cousin
Rachel...."

"Have you got a cousin, Roger? How damned odd!" said Gilbert.

"Yes. I must bring her round here one evening. She's not a bad female
... quite intelligent for her sex. Go on!"

"They're like us, Quinny!" Gilbert continued. "They're good in parts and
bad in parts. That's the vital discovery of the twentieth century, and
I've made it!..."

Henry had been eager to hear Gilbert's criticism of his novel, but this
kind of talk irritated him, though he could not understand why it
irritated him, and his irritation drove him to sneers.

"I suppose," he said, "you want to substitute Social Reform and Improved
Toryism for Romance. Lordy God, man, do you want to put eugenics and
blue-books in place of the love of woman?"

"You're getting cross, Quinny!..."

"No, I'm not!"

"Oh, yes, you are ... very cross ... and you know what the fine for it
is. If you want my opinion, here it is. I _am_ prepared to accept
eugenics and blue-books as a substitute for the love of women ... if
they're interesting, of course. That's all I ask of any one or anything
... that it shall interest me. I don't care what it is, so long as it
doesn't bore me. Women bore me ... women in books and plays, I mean ...
because they're all of a pattern: lovebirds. I've never seen a play in
which the women weren't used for sloppy emotional purposes. The minute I
see a woman walking on to the stage, I say to myself, 'Here comes the
Slop-tap!' and as sure as I'm alive, the author immediately turns the
tap on and the woman is over ears and head in slop before we're
two-thirds through the first act. And they're not like that in real
life, any more than we are. We aren't continually making goo-goo eyes,
nor are they. I'm going to write a play one of these days that will
stagger the civilised world, I tell you! It'll be bung full of women but
it won't have a word of slop fr