’As you like.  Every one’s got to decide for themselves.  It amuses you, I suppose.’

’Of course, it does.  Why not?  I love it.  Not only writing, but being in the swim, making a kind of a name, doing what other people do.  I’m not mother, who does but write because she must, and pipes but as the linnets do.’

’No, thank goodness.  You’re as intellectually honest as any one I know, and as greedy for the wrong things.’

‘I want a good time.  Why not?’

’Why not?  Only that, as long as we’re all out for a good time, those of us who can afford to will get it, and nothing more, and those of us who can’t will get nothing at all.  You see, I think it’s taking hold of things by the wrong end.  As long as we go on not thinking, not finding out, but greedily wanting good things—­well, we shall be as we are, that’s all—­Potterish.’

‘You mean I’m Potterish,’ observed Jane, without rancour.

‘Oh Lord, we all are,’ said Gideon in disgust.  ’Every profiteer, every sentimentalist, ever muddler.  Every artist directly he thinks of his art as something marketable, something to bring him fame; every scientist or scholar (if there are any) who fakes a fact in the interest of his theory; every fool who talks through his hat without knowing; every sentimentalist who plays up to the sentimentalism in himself and other people; every second-hand ignoramus who takes over a view or a prejudice wholesale, without investigating the facts it’s based on for himself.  You find it everywhere, the taint; you can’t get away from it.  Except by keeping quiet and learning, and wanting truth more than anything else.’

‘It sounds a dull life, Arthur.  Rather like K’s, in her old laboratory.’

‘Yes, rather like K’s.  Not dull; no.  Finding things out can’t be dull.’

’Well, old thing, go and find things out.  But come back in time for the wedding, and then we’ll see what next.’

Jane was not seriously alarmed.  She believed that this of Arthur’s, was a short attack; when they were married she would see that he got cured of it.  She wasn’t going to let him drop out of things and disappear, her brilliant Arthur, who had his world in his hand to play with.  Journalism, politics, public life of some sort—­it was these that he was so eminently fitted for and must go in for.

‘You mustn’t waste yourself, Arthur,’ she said.  ’It’s all right to lie low for a bit, but when you come back you must do something worth while....  I’m sorry about the Fact; I think you might have stayed on and saved it.  But it’s your show.  Go and explore Central Europe, then, and learn all about it.  Then come back and write a book on political science which will be repulsive to all but learned minds.  But remember we’re getting married in June; don’t be late, will you.  And write to me from Russia.  Letters that will do for me to send to the newspapers, telling me not to spend my money on hats and theatres but on distributing anti-Bolshevist and anti-Czarist tracts.  I’ll have the letters published in leaflets at threepence a hundred, and drop them about in public places.’