e much notice of him.

"Too many things," said Rodney, indistinctly over his thick pipe.
"That's all."

Peter, irritated, said, "The old story. The more things the better; why
not? You'd be happy on a desert island full of horrid naked savages. You
think you're civilised, but you're really the most primitive person
I know."

Rodney said he was glad; he liked to be primitive, and added, "But
you're wrong, of course. The naked savages would like anything they could
get--beads or feathers or top hats; they're not natural ascetics; the
simple life is enforced.... St. Francis took off all his clothes in the
Piazza and began his new career without any."

"Disgusting," murmured Peter.

"That," said Rodney, "is what people like Denis should do. They need to
unload, strip bare, to find themselves, to find life."

"Denis," said Peter, "is the most alive person I know, as it happens.
He's found life without needing to take his clothes off--so he scores
over St. Francis."

Denis had rushed through the twilight vivid like a flame--he had lit it
for a moment and left it grey. Peter knew that.

"But he hasn't," Rodney maintained, "got the key of the thing. If he
did take his clothes off, it would be a toss-up whether he found more
life or lost what he's got. That's all wrong, don't you see. That's what
ails all these delightful, prosperous people. They're swimming with
life-belts."

"You'll be saying next," said Peter, disgusted, "that you admire
Savonarola and his bonfire."

"I do, of course. But he'd only got hold of half of it--half the gospel
of the empty-handed. The point is to lose and laugh." For a moment Rodney
had a vision of Peter standing bare-headed in the dust and smiling. "To
drop all the trappings and still find life jolly--just because it _is_
life, not because of what it brings. That's what St. Francis did. That's
where Italy scores over England. I remember at Lerici the beggars
laughing on the shore, with a little maccaroni to last them the day.
There was a man all done up in bandages, hopping about on crutches and
grinning. Smashed to bits, and his bones sticking out of his skin for
hunger, but there was the sun and the sea and the game he was playing
with dice, and he looked as if he was saying, '_Nihil habentes, omnia
possidentes_; isn't it a jolly day?' When Denis says that, I shall begin
to have hopes for him. At present he thinks it's a jolly day because he's
got money to throw about and a hundred