‘Hallo.  Enjoying life?’

‘Precisely that.’

‘I say, what are you doing with the Fact?’

Gideon looked at her sourly.

’Oh, you’ve noticed it too.  It’s becoming quite pretty reading, isn’t it.  Less like a Blue Book.’

’Much less.  I should say it was beginning to appeal to a wider circle.  Is that the idea?’

’Don’t ask me.  Ask Peacock.  Whatever the idea is, it’s his, not mine....  But it’s not a considered idea at all.  It’s merely a yielding to the (apparently) irresistible pressure of atmosphere.’

‘I see.  A truce with the Potter armies.’

’No.  There’s no such thing as a truce with them.  It’s the first steps of a retreat.’

He said it sharply and suddenly, in the way of a man who is, at the moment, making a discovery.  He turned and looked across the room at Peacock, who was talking and talking, in his clever, keen, pleasant way, not in the least like a Blue Book.

‘We’re not like Blue Books,’ Gideon muttered sadly.  ’Hardly any one is.  Unfortunate.  Very unfortunate.  What’s one to do about it?’

’Lord Pinkerton would say, learn human nature as it is and build on it.  Exploit its weaknesses, instead of tilting against them.  Accept sentimentality and prejudice, and use them.’

‘I am aware that he would....  What do you say, Katherine?’

’Nothing.  What’s the use?  I’m one of the Blue Books—­not a fair judge, therefore.’

‘No.  You’d make no terms, ever.’

‘I’ve never been tempted.  One may have to make terms, sometimes.’

‘I think not,’ said Gideon.  ‘I think one never is obliged to make terms.’

‘If the enemy is too strong?’

’Then one goes under.  Gets out of it.  That’s not making terms....  Good-night; I’m going home.  I hate parties, you know.  So do you.  Why do either of us go to them?’

‘They take one’s thoughts off,’ said Katherine in her own mind.  Her blue eyes contracted as she looked after him.

’He’s failing; he’s being hurt.  He’ll go under.  He should have been a scientist or a scholar or a chemist, like me; something in which knowledge matters and people don’t.  People will break his heart.’

3

Gideon walked all the way back from Hampstead to his own rooms.  It was a soft, damp night, full of little winds that blew into the city from February fields and muddy roads far off.  There would be lambs in the fields....  Gideon suddenly wanted to get out of the town into that damp, dark country that circled it.  There would be fewer people there; fewer minds crowded together, making a dense atmosphere that was impervious to the piercing, however sharp, of truth.  All this dense mass of stupid, muddled, huddled minds....  What was to be done with it?  Greedy minds, ignorant minds, sentimental, truthless minds....