“Well, so it is, dearie.  Love’s not a spiritual nor a mental thing.  It’s purely physical.  A love affair is always a thousand times swifter under the Southern Cross than under the Great Bear.  And it’s a million times swifter on board ship than anywhere else because people are thrown into such close contact.  They’ve nothing to do and their bodies get slack and pampered, and they eat heaps too much.  It’s like the Romans in the dying days of Pompeii—­eating, drinking and physical love-making.  One day I heard Kraill say in a lecture that men and women can’t work together, in offices or anything, or scientific laboratories because they—­well—­they’d get in each other’s light and make each other jumpy.”

“And do you believe it?”

“Course I do,” he said.  “Even if you had the brains or the knowledge for—­say research work, I couldn’t work with you.  I’d be thinking of the way your lips look when they’re getting ready to kiss me; and of your white shoulders that I can just catch a peep of when you sit a little way behind me, in that white blouse with little fleur-de-lys on the collar.  Naturally if I tried to work then, the work would go to pot.”

“But—­” she tried to control her voice, which shook in spite of herself, “do you—­think of those things—­about me?”

“Of course.  All men do about their women.”

“It’s horrible,” she gasped, frowning at the Southern Cross.  “And doesn’t it mean that men are specialized, too?”

“Not a bit of it!  Men have to do the work of the world.  Women are just the softness of life.”

“Cushions for men to fall on?” she said mischievously.

“No, half-holidays when he’s fed up with work.”  He looked at her, laughing at her indignant face.  “Why be superior, Marcella?  You’re just as bad as anyone else, only you’re not used to it and haven’t thought of it before.  Who likes being kissed?”

“Oh, but it wouldn’t get in the way of my work,” she cried, flushing hotly.

“Wait till you try it, dear child.  The first time I ever got the fever taught me a lot.  It wasn’t love, of course.”

“When you loved Violet?” she asked in low tones.

“Oh Lord no!  This was a little French girl who picked me up when I was squiffed after I’d passed the First.  About twenty of us—­all from St. Crispin’s—­had been up for the First.  We all passed but two, and we all had to get drunk to buck those two up.  We went to the Empire and kicked up such a gory din that we were helped out.  A little mamzelle from the Promenade took charge of me.  I—­I hadn’t thought about those things much before.  At home they were taboo.  I’d always been terrified of girls—­If I hadn’t been drunk then I’d never have done it.  I thought it unutterably beastly.  For months after that I was afraid to look the Mater in the face.  I thought she was unutterably beastly, as well, just because she was a woman.  It made a tremendous dint on me.”