that it could conduct its researches without resorting to the use of humanity and that he could present his results unsigned by his own personality.  He had often pitied doctors, who, instead of dealing with exquisitely consistent chemicals, have to work on men and women, unselected specimens of the most variable of all species, which was singularly inept at variating in the direction of beauty; and it seemed miraculous that he could turn the yeasty workings of his mind into cool, clear statements of hitherto unstated truth that would in no way betray to those that read them that their maker was lustful and hot-tempered and, about some things, melancholic.  He had felt Science to be so gloriously above life; to make the smallest discovery was like hearing the authentic voice of God who is no man but a Spirit.

But now none of these things mattered.  He was caught in the net of life and nothing that was above it was of any use to him; as well expect a man who lies through the night with his foot in a man-trap to be comforted by the beauty of the stars.  The only God he could have any use for would be the kind the Salvationists talk about, who goes about giving drunken men an arm past the public-house and coming between the pickpocket and Black Maria with a well-timed text.  There was nothing in Science that would lift him out of this hell of loneliness, this conviction of impotence, this shame of achievementless maturity.  He perceived that he had really known this for a long time, and that it was the meaning of the growing irritability which had of late changed his day in the laboratory from the rapt, swift office of the mind it used to be, to an interminable stretch of drudgery checkered with fits of rage at faulty apparatus, neurotic moods when he felt unable to perform fine movements, and desolating spaces when he stood at the window and stared at the high grassy embankment which ran round the hut, designed to break the outward force of any explosion that might occur, and thought grimly over the commercial uses that were to be made of his work.  What was the use of sweating his brains so that one set of fools could blow another set of fools to glory?  Oh, this was hell!...

The detestable blonde was now holding the platform in attitudes such as are ascribed to goddesses by British sculptors, and speaking with a slow, pure gusto of the horrors of immorality.  For a moment her allusions to the wrongs of unmarried mothers made him think of the proud but defeated poise of his mother’s head, and then the peculiar calm, gross qualities of her phrases came home to him.  He wondered how long she had been going on like this, and he stared round to see how these people, who looked so very decent, whom it was impossible to imagine other than fully dressed, were taking it.  Without anticipation his eyes fell on Ellen and found her looking very Scotch and clapping sturdily.  Of course it must be all right, since everything about her was all right,