of this gold is a sacred and fundamental fact.  Think of it!  Why should it be?  There isn’t a why!  I live in perpetual amazement at the gullibility of my fellow-creatures.  Of a morning sometimes, I can assure you, I lie in bed fancying that people may have found out this swindle in the night, expect to hear a tumult downstairs and see your mother-in-law come rushing into the room with a rejected shilling from the milkman.  ‘What’s this?’ says he.  ’This Muck for milk?’ But it never happens.  Never.  If it did, if people suddenly cleared their minds of this cant of money, what would happen?  The true nature of man would appear.  I should whip out of bed, seize some weapon, and after the milkman forthwith.  It’s becoming to keep the peace, but it’s necessary to have milk.  The neighbours would come pouring out—­also after milk.  Milkman, suddenly enlightened, would start clattering up the street.  After him!  Clutch—­tear!  Got him!  Over goes the cart!  Fight if you like, but don’t upset the can!...  Don’t you see it all?—­perfectly reasonable every bit of it.  I should return, bruised and bloody, with the milk-can under my arm.  Yes, I should have the milk-can—­I should keep my eye on that....  But why go on?  You of all men should know that life is a struggle for existence, a fight for food.  Money is just the lie that mitigates our fury.”

“No,” said Lewisham; “no!  I’m not prepared to admit that.”

“What is money?”

Mr. Lewisham dodged.  “You state your case first,” he said.  “I really don’t see what all this has to do with cheating at a seance.”

“I weave my defence from this loom, though.  Take some aggressively respectable sort of man—­a bishop, for example.”

“Well,” said Lewisham, “I don’t much hold with bishops.”

“It doesn’t matter.  Take a professor of science, walking the earth.  Remark his clothing, making a decent citizen out of him, concealing the fact that physically he is a flabby, pot-bellied degenerate.  That is the first Lie of his being.  No fringes round his trousers, my boy.  Notice his hair, groomed and clipped, the tacit lie that its average length is half an inch, whereas in nature he would wave a few score yard-long hairs of ginger grey to the winds of heaven.  Notice the smug suppressions of his face.  In his mouth are Lies in the shape of false teeth.  Then on the earth somewhere poor devils are toiling to get him meat and corn and wine.  He is clothed in the lives of bent and thwarted weavers, his Way is lit by phossy jaw, he eats from lead-glazed crockery—­all his ways are paved with the lives of men....  Think of the chubby, comfortable creature!  And, as Swift has it—­to think that such a thing should deal in pride!...  He pretends that his blessed little researches are in some way a fair return to these remote beings for their toil, their suffering; pretends that he and his parasitic career are payment for their thwarted