“A salad, some sandwiches, a bottle of hock and plenty of strawberries.  We shan’t starve, at any rate,” Maraton declared.  “Lean back in your chairs, you children of the city, lean down and look at your mother.  Look at her smoke-hung arms, stretched out as though to gather in the universe; and the lights upon her bosom—­see how they come twinkling into existence.”

Both of them followed his outstretched finger with their eyes, but Julia only shivered.

“I hate it,” she muttered, “hate it all!  London seems to me like a great, rapacious monster.  Our bodies and souls are sacrificed over there.  For what?  I was in Piccadilly and the parks to-day.  Is there any justice in the world, I wonder?  It’s just as though there were a kink in the great wheels and they weren’t running true.”

“Sometimes I think,” Maraton declared, “that the matter would right itself automatically but for the interference of weak people.  The laws of life are tampered with so often by people without understanding.  They keep alive the unworthy.  They try to make life easier for the unfit.  They endow hospitals and build model dwellings.  It’s a sop to their consciences.  It’s like planting a flower on the grave of the man you have murdered.”

“But these things help,” Aaron protested.

“Help?  They retard,” Maraton insisted.  “All charity is the most vicious form of self-indulgence.  Can’t you see that if the poor died in the street and the sick were left to crawl about the face of the earth, the whole business would right itself automatically.  The unfit would die out.  A stronger generation would arise, a generation stronger and better able to look after itself.  But come, we have been serious long enough.  You are tired with your day’s work, Miss Julia, and Aaron, too.  I’ve been in the committee room of the House of Commons half the day, and my head’s addled with figures.  Here comes our supper.  Let us drop the more serious things of life.  We’ll try and put a little colour into your cheeks, young lady.”

He served them both and filled their glasses with wine.  Then, as he ate, he leaned back in his chair and watched them.  For all her strange beauty, Julia, too, was one of the suffering children of the world.  The lines of her figure, which should have been so subtle and fascinating, were sharpened by an unnatural thinness.  Aaron’s cheeks were almost like a consumptive’s, his physique was puny.  There was something in their expression common to both.  Maraton was conscious of a wave of pity as he withdrew his eyes.

“Sometimes,” he said, “I feel almost angry with you two.  You carry on your shoulders the burden of other people’s sufferings.  It is well to feel and realise them, and the gift of sympathy is a beautiful thing, but our own individualism is also a sacred gift.  It is not for us to weaken or destroy it by encouraging a superabundant sympathy for others.  We each have our place in the world,