but speaks. Often have I seen that same look, still more intense, in
Tony's eyes, when he has become mazed with efforts to express himself,
and I have wished that as with the dog, a pat, a small caress, could
change the look into a joyfulness. But it is just because I am fond of
him that I am able to feel with him and to a certain extent to divine
his half-uttered thoughts; to take them up and return them to him
clothed in more or less current English which, he knows, would convey
them to a stranger, and which shows him more clearly than before what
he really was thinking. That seems to be one of my chief functions
here--thought-publisher. Evidently grateful, he talks and talks,
usually while the remains of a meal lie scattered on the table. "Aye!"
he says, at the end of a debauch of _likes_. "I don' know what I du
know. Tony's a silly ol' fule!"

He does not believe it; nor do I; for I am often struck with wonder at
the thoughts and mind-pictures which we so curiously arrive at
together.

15

The old feudal class-distinctions are fast breaking down. But are we
arriving any nearer the democratic ideal of _Liberte_, _Egalite_,
_Fraternite_? In place of the old distinctions, are we not setting up
new distinctions, still more powerful to divide? There is to-day a
greater social gulf fixed between the man who takes his morning tub and
him who does not, than between the man of wealth or family and him who
has neither. New-made and pink, the 'gentleman' arises daily from his
circle of splashes, a masculine Venus from a foam of soap-suds. (About
womenfolk we are neither so enquiring nor so particular.) For the cults
of religion and pedigree we have substituted the cult of soap and
water, and 'the prominent physician of Harley Street' is its high
priest. Are you a reputed atheist? Poor man! doubtless God will
enlighten you in His good time. Are you wicked? Well, well.... Have you
made a fortune by forsaking the official Christian morality in favour
of the commercial code? You can redeem all by endowing a hospital or
university. But can they say of you that somehow or other you don't
look quite clean? Then you are damn'd!

The cottage where the heroine of the 'nice' book lives is always
spotlessly clean. A foreigner who adopts the bath-habit, is said to be
just like an Englishman. It is the highest praise he can earn, and will
go further in English society than the best introductions.

[Sidenote: _CLEANLINESS_]

Clea