THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

things, you don't know how it was with us, and how it is with us.

You don't know the hunger for the mere sight of one another; you

don't know anything."

Britten looked at his finger-nails closely. His red face puckered

to a wry frown. "Haven't we all at times wanted the world put

back?" he grunted, and looked hard and close at one particular nail.

There was a long pause.

"I want her," I said, "and I'm going to have her. I'm too tired for

balancing the right or wrong of it any more. You can't separate

them. I saw her yesterday… She's-ill… I'd take her

now, if death were just outside the door waiting for us."

"Torture?"

I thought. "Yes."

"For her?"

"There isn't," I said.

"If there was?"

I made no answer.

"It's blind Want. And there's nothing ever been put into you to

stand against it. What are you going to do with the rest of your

lives?"

"No end of things."

"Nothing."

"I don't believe you are right," I said. "I believe we can save

something-"

Britten shook his head. "Some scraps of salvage won't excuse you,"

he said.

His indignation rose. "In the middle of life!" he said. "No man

has a right to take his hand from the plough!"

He leant forward on his desk and opened an argumentative palm. "You

know, Remington," he said, "and I know, that if this could be fended

off for six months-if you could be clapped in prison, or got out of

the way somehow,-until this marriage was all over and settled down

for a year, say-you know then you two could meet, curious, happy,

as friends. Saved! You KNOW it."

I turned and stared at him. "You're wrong, Britten," I said. "And

does it matter if we could?"

I found that in talking to him I could frame the apologetics I had

not been able to find for myselfalone.

"Iam certain of one thing, Britten. It is our duty not to hush up

this scandal."

He raised his eyebrows. I perceived now the element of absurdity in

me, but at the time I was as serious as a man who is burning.

"It's our duty," I went on, "to smash now openly in the sight of

every one. Yes! I've got that as clean and plain-as prison

whitewash. Iam convinced that we have got to be public to the

uttermost now-I mean it-until every corner of our world knows this

story, knows it fully, adds it to the Parnell story and the Ashton

Dean story and the Carmel story and the Witterslea story, and all

the other stories that have picked man after man out of English

public life, the men with active imaginations, the men of strong

initiative. To think this tottering old-woman ridden Empire should

dare to waste a man on such a score! You say I ought to be

penitent-"

Britten shook his head and smiled very faintly.

"I'm boiling with indignation," I said. " I lay in bed last night

and went through it all. What in God's name was to be expected of

us but what has happened? I went through my life bit by bit last

night, I recalled all I've had to do with virtue and women, and all

I was told and how I was prepared. I was born into cowardice and

debasement. We all are. Our generation's grimy with hypocrisy. I

came to the most beautiful things in life-like peeping Tom of

Coventry. I was never given a light, never given a touch of natural

manhood by all this dingy, furtive, canting, humbugging English

world. Thank God! I'll soon be out of it! The shame of it! The

very savages in Australia initiate their children better than the

English do to-day. Neither of us was ever given a view of what they

call morality that didn't make it show as shabby subservience, as

the meanest discretion, an abject submission to unreasonable

prohibitions! meek surrender of mind and body to the dictation of

pedants and old women and fools. We weren't taught-we were mumbled

at! And when we found that the thing they called unclean, unclean,

was Pagan beauty-God! it was a glory to sin, Britten, it was a

pride and splendour like bathing in the sunlight after dust and

grime!"

"Yes," said Britten. "That's all very well-"

I interrupted him. "I know there's a case-I'm begi

it a valid case against us; but we never met it! There's a steely

pride in self restraint, a nobility of chastity, but only for those

who see and think and act-untrammeled and unafraid. The other

thing, the current thing, why! it's worth as much as the chastity of

a monkey kept in a cage by itself!" I put my foot in a chair, and

urged my case upon him. "This is a dirty world, Britten, simply

because it is a muddled world, and the thing you call morality is

dirtier now than the thing you call immorality. Why don't the

moralists pick their stuff out of the slime if they care for it, and

wipe it?-damn them! Iam burning now to say: 'Yes, we did this and