“Sin!” said Ishmael.  “Don’t you get to that point in life when the word ‘sin’ becomes extraordinarily meaningless, like the word ‘time’ in that chapter of Ecclesiastes where it occurs so often that when one comes to the end of the chapter ‘t-i-m-e’ means nothing to one.  Sin seems to come so often in life it grows meaningless too.”

“Sin, technically speaking, does, to all but the theologian; but playing the game, doing the decent thing, not only to others, but to oneself, and keeping one’s spiritual taste unspoiled, these things remain, and they really mean the same.”

“I suppose they do.  I like talking to you, Judy.  It’s not like talking to a woman, although one’s conscious all the time that you are very much of a woman.  But you seem to meet one on common ground.”

“There’s not so much difference between men and women as people are apt to think.  People are always saying ’men are more this and women are more that’ when really it’s the case of the individual, irrespective of sex.  A favourite cry is that men are more selfish.  I really rather doubt it.  Perhaps, if one must generalise, men are more selfish and women are more egotistical, and of the two the former is the easier vice to overcome.  But all this talk of men and women, women and men, seems to me like something I was in the middle of years ago, and that now means nothing.”

“What does mean anything to you now?”

“I’m not quite sure I can tell you yet,” said Judy slowly; “and I don’t think it would be any good to you—­there’d be too much against it.  What does mean anything to you, personally?”

“I don’t know....  I only know that for real youth again, for perfect ease of body, I would give everything short of my immortal soul.”

“Ah! then you still feel the soul’s the most important?”

“Part of me does—­the part of me that responds to the truth, which is going on all the time, with us if we like, without us if not, but which is surely there.  It’s because I know it’s there, even though my longings are out of key with it, that I still say that about the soul.”

They went up into the house, and that night Georgie, whether because some feminine jealousy that he talked so much with Judy was stinging at her, or whether because even without that spur she would have felt some old stirring of warmth, was sweeter to him than for long past.  As he held her against him he was aware that it was not so much passion he felt as that deeper, sweeter something Judy had spoken of, and for the first time he felt free to savour it instead of half-resenting it as a loss of glamour.

This was a satisfying companionship he had of Georgie, a sweet thing without which life would have been emptier, even if it settled no problems and left untouched the lonely spaces which no human foot can range in their entirety, though in youth some one step may make them tremble throughout their shining floors....  It was good, though it was not the whole of life, and as he took it he gave thanks for the varied relationships in the world which added so to its richness, even if they could only impinge upon its outer edges.