“I hate that way of talking,” said Marcella abruptly.  “I like Wullie’s way best.  He says lives are the pathway of life, just as you do.  But he says it’s not just life, it’s either God or beasts that walk along it and we’ve to help God kill the beasts so as to leave the pathway clear for Him.  It means the same, but your way of saying it is so—­so ungodly.”

“I know.  But there it is.  The way I talk is the way Kraill and his school talk.  Of course, there’s something in it.  There would be a great deal in it if we were only aiming at making bodies.  All this tricking out—­refinement—­it may produce the people who tower over others—­like the Greeks with their ‘pure beauty’ you know—­”

He stopped speaking suddenly and they walked on in silence while Marcella looked eagerly from shop window to passers-by and back again.

“It’s all wrong, doctor,” she said at last.  “It’s too one-sided.”

“Yes.  And look at the Greeks now—­”

She turned to him with a quick, birdlike glance.

“Do you know what I think?” she said.

“Not quite all of it,” said the doctor, watching her face, and thinking how incongruous it looked in Regent Street.

“Well, I think biology’s one of the beasts we’ve to kill before God walks along us.  So there!  Tropical forests—­maggots—­women,” she added, and the doctor laughed outright.

The chief impression she got of London was its aimlessness.  It reminded her irresistibly of an ant-hill she had seen disturbed once.  Myriads of tiny creatures had scurried passionately, exhaustingly, after each other to and fro, no whence and no whither; the people thronging out of shops and offices at dusk frightened her:  there seemed so many of them, and, looking at their tired, strained faces and their unkingly way of hurrying along, uninterested and uninteresting save in getting to their destination, it seemed to her that they were not thinking of ever “towering”:  when Dr. Angus reminded her that they were so busy keeping alive that they had no time to think how and why they were alive at all, she was plunged into black depression; at home she had only had less than a hundred people and a few beasts about the farm to pity.  Now it came to her with sudden force that all these people, so driven by different forces, were to be pitied.  But as soon as she saw the crowd of people at Fenchurch Street station and a chalked notice, “Boat train for the R.M.S. Oriana,” she forgot abstract worries.

There seemed to be a good many children, small groups of five or six with father and mother, and piles of inexpensive-looking luggage; there were several young men who looked very much like the lads who worked about the farm at home; there were groups of girls and a more or less heterogeneous collection of people who might be passengers, and might be friends seeing passengers off.  But what impressed her immensely was a pile of brightly striped deck-chairs with sun-awnings.  They looked exotic, tropical on the grey, gloomy platform; they seemed so pleasantly lazy and luxurious among the piles of utilitarian-looking luggage.  The doctor bought one for her and put it among her baggage.