"I didn't say I would do so...." He
hurried away from the subject. "But chiefly," he said, "I don't want
anything permanent in my life. Now, do you understand? Roger's like the
Rock of Ages ... the same yesterday, to-day and forever, but I want to
be different to-morrow from what I am to-day, and different again the
day after. Endless variety for me!"

"It'll be an awful lot of trouble," said Gilbert.

"That doesn't matter. Now my argument is that I have a different nature
from Roger and all of you, but I'm not a worse man than any of you
are...."

"No, no, of course not," they asserted.

"I'm just different, that's all. The man who loves one woman and cleaves
to her until death do them part isn't a better man or a worse man than
the chap who loves a different woman every year, and doesn't cleave to
any of them. He's just different. You see," he continued, pleased with
the way he was enunciating his opinions, "we are of all sorts. There are
lustful men and there are men who have scarcely any sex impulse at all,
and there are coarse men and refined men, and ... and all sorts of men,
and they're all necessary to the world. I say, why not recognise the
differences between them and leave it at that! It's silly to try and fit
us all with the same system of morals when nobody but a fool would try
to fit us all with the same size hat!"

"You don't make any allowance for the views of women," Roger said.

"Oh, yes, I do," Henry retorted quickly. "There is as much variety among
women as there is among men. Some of them are monogamous and some
aren't. That's all!"

Gilbert stretched his legs out in front of him and then drew them back
again. "Our little Quinny's got this world neatly parcelled out," he
said. "Hasn't he, coves? There he sits, like a little Jehovah, handing
out natures as if they were school-prizes. 'Here, my little lad, here's
your set of morals. Now, run away and make a hog of yourself with the
women!' 'Here, my little lad, here's your set of morals. Now, run away
and be a bally monk!'"

"Exactly!" said Henry. "That's my view!"

"Well, all I can say," said Ninian, "is that it won't do. This may be a
tom-fool sort of a world, but it gets along in its tom-fool way a lot
better than it will in your neat arrangement of things...."

"Besides," Roger said, taking up the argument from Ninian, "there is a
common measure in life. Oh, I know quite well that there are differences
between man and man, but there a