end it, and begin again. We're going to be
happy, because life is too jolly to miss."

Peter ended defiantly, and flung his razor in among the socks.

Rodney had listened quietly, his eyes on Peter's profile. When he
stayed silent, Peter supposed that he had at last convinced him of the
unbreakable strength of his purpose for iniquity, and that he would give
him up and go away. After a minute he turned and looked up at Rodney, and
said, "Now do you see that it's no good?"

Rodney took out his pipe and knocked it out and put it away before he
answered:

"I'm glad you've said all that, Peter. Not that I didn't know it all
before; of course I did. When I said at first that I didn't understand
you, I was lying. I did understand, perfectly well. But I'm glad you've
said it, because it's well to know that you realise it so clearly
yourself. It saves my explaining it to you. It gives us a common
knowledge to start on. And now may _I_ talk for a little, please? No,
not for a little; for some time."

"Go on," said Peter. "But it's no use, you know.... What do you mean by
our common knowledge? The knowledge that I'm a failure?"

Rodney nodded. "Precisely that. You've stated the case so clearly
yourself--in outline, for you've left out a great deal, of course--that
really it doesn't leave much for me to say. Let's leave you alone for
the moment. I want to talk about other people. There are other people
in the world besides ourselves, of course, improbable as the fact
occasionally seems. The fact, I mean, that it's a world not of individual
units but of closely connected masses of people, not one of whom stands
alone. One can't detach oneself; one's got to be in with one camp or
another. The world's full of different and opposing camps--worse luck.
There are the beauty-lovers and the beauty-scorners, and all the
fluctuating masses in between, like most of us, who love some aspects of
it and scorn others. There are the well-meaning and the ill-meaning--and
again the incoherent cross-benchers, who mean a little good and a little
harm and for the most part mean nothing at all either way. Again, there
are what people call the well-bred, the ill-bred, and of course the
half-bred. An idiotic division that, because what do we know, any of us,
of breeding, that we should call it good or bad? But there it is; a most
well-marked division in everyone's eyes. And (and now I'm getting to the
point) there are the rich and the poor--or cal