“I see,” said Graham, looking at the flushed faces, the flash and swirl of movement, and still thinking of that nightmare of pink helpless limbs.  “And these are—­mothers.”

“Most of them.”

“The more I see of these things the more complex I find your problems.  This, for instance, is a surprise.  That news from Paris was a surprise.”

In a little while he spoke again: 

“These are mothers.  Presently, I suppose, I shall get into the modern way of seeing things.  I have old habits of mind clinging about me—­habits based, I suppose, on needs that are over and done with.  Of course, in our time, a woman was supposed not only to bear children, but to cherish them, to devote herself to them, to educate them—­all the essentials of moral and mental education a child owed its mother.  Or went without.  Quite a number, I admit, went without.  Nowadays, clearly, there is no more need for such care than if they were butterflies.  I see that!  Only there was an ideal—­that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and serenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men—­to love her was a sort of worship—­”

He stopped and repeated, “A sort of worship.”

“Ideals change,” said the little man, “as needs change.”

Graham awoke from an instant reverie and Asano repeated his words.  Graham’s mind returned to the thing at hand.

“Of course I see the perfect reasonableness of this.  Restraint, soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish act, they are necessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers.  Dourness is man’s tribute to unconquered nature.  But man has conquered nature now for all practical purposes—­his political affairs are managed by Bosses with a black police—­and life is joyous.”

He looked at the dancers again.  “Joyous,” he said.

“There are weary moments,” said the little officer, reflectively.

“They all look young.  Down there I should be visibly the oldest man.  And in my own time I should have passed as middle-aged.”

“They are young.  There are few old people in this class in the work cities.”

“How is that?”

“Old people’s lives are not so pleasant as they used to be, unless they are rich to hire lovers and helpers.  And we have an institution called Euthanasy.”

“Ah! that Euthanasy!” said Graham.  “The easy death?”

“The easy death.  It is the last pleasure.  The Euthanasy Company does it well.  People will pay the sum—­it is a costly thing—­long beforehand, go off to some pleasure city and return impoverished and weary, very weary.”

“There is a lot left for me to understand,” said Graham after a pause.  “Yet I see the logic of it all.  Our array of angry virtues and sour restraints was the consequence of danger and insecurity.  The Stoic, the Puritan, even in my time, were vanishing types.  In the old days man was armed against Pain, now he is eager for Pleasure.  There lies the difference.  Civilisation has driven pain and danger so far off—­for well-to-do people.  And only well-to-do people matter now.  I have been asleep two hundred years.”