“And everybody begging.  Even the people at work by the roadside.  Who ought to be getting wages—­sufficient....”

“Begging—­from foreigners—­is just a sport in Italy,” said Sir Richmond.  “It doesn’t imply want.  But I agree that a large part of Italy is frightfully overpopulated.  The whole world is.  Don’t you think so, Martineau?”

“Well—­yes—­for its present social organization.”

“For any social organization,” said Sir Richmond.

“I’ve no doubt of it,” said Miss Seyffert, and added amazingly:  “I’m out for Birth Control all the time.”

A brief but active pause ensued.  Dr. Martineau in a state of sudden distress attempted to drink out of a cold and empty coffee cup.

“The world swarms with cramped and undeveloped lives,” said Sir Richmond.  “Which amount to nothing.  Which do not even represent happiness.  And which help to use up the resources, the fuel and surplus energy of the world.”

“I suppose they have a sort of liking for their lives,” Miss Grammont reflected.

“Does that matter?  They do nothing to carry life on.  They are just vain repetitions—­imperfect dreary, blurred repetitions of one common life.  All that they feel has been felt, all that they do has been done better before.  Because they are crowded and hurried and underfed and undereducated.  And as for liking their lives, they need never have had the chance.”

“How many people are there in the world?” she asked abruptly.

“I don’t know.  Twelve hundred, fifteen hundred millions perhaps.”

“And in your world?”

“I’d have two hundred and fifty millions, let us say.  At most.  It would be quite enough for this little planet, for a time, at any rate.  Don’t you think so, doctor?”

“I don’t know,” said Dr. Martineau.  “Oddly enough, I have never thought about that question before.  At least, not from this angle.”

“But could you pick out two hundred and fifty million aristocrats?” began Miss Grammont.  “My native instinctive democracy—­”

“Need not be outraged,” said Sir Richmond.  “Any two hundred and fifty million would do, They’d be able to develop fully, all of them.  As things are, only a minority can do that.  The rest never get a chance.”

“That’s what I always say,” said Miss Seyffert.

“A New Age,” said Dr. Martineau; “a New World.  We may be coming to such a stage, when population, as much as fuel, will be under a world control.  If one thing, why not the other?  I admit that the movement of thought is away from haphazard towards control—­”

“I’m for control all the time,” Miss Seyffert injected, following up her previous success.

“I admit,” the doctor began his broken sentence again with marked patience, “that the movement of thought is away from haphazard towards control—­in things generally.  But is the movement of events?”

“The eternal problem of man,” said Sir Richmond.  “Can our wills prevail?”