“Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s,” said Shearwater, as though to himself; “and to God, and to sex, and to work.... There must be a working arrangement.” He sighed again. “Everything in proportion. In proportion,” he repeated, as though the word were magical and had power. “In proportion.” “Who’s talking about proportion?” They turned round. In the doorway Gumbril Senior was standing, smoothing his ruffled hair and tugging at his beard. His eyes twinkled cheerfully behind his spectacles. “Poaching on my architectural ground?” he said. “This is Shearwater,” Gumbril Junior put in, and explained who he was. The old gentleman sat down. “Proportion,” he said—“I was just thinking about it, now, as I was walking back. You can’t help thinking about it in these London streets, where it doesn’t exist. You can’t help pining for it. There are some streets ... oh, my God!” And Gumbril Senior threw up his hands in horror. “It’s like listening to a symphony of cats to walk along them. Senseless discords and a horrible disorder all the way. And the one street that was really like a symphony by Mozart—how busily and gleefully they’re pulling it down now! Another year and there’ll be nothing left of Regent Street. There’ll only be a jumble of huge, hideous buildings at three-quarters of a million apiece. A concert of Brobdingnagian cats. Order has been turned into a disgusting chaos. We need no barbarians from outside; they’re on the premises, all the time.” The old man paused and pulled his beard meditatively. Gumbril Junior sat in silence, smoking; and in silence Shearwater revolved within the walls of his great round head his agonizing thoughts of Mrs. Viveash. “It has always struck me as very curious,” Gumbril Senior went on, “that people are so little affected by the vile and discordant architecture around them. Suppose, now, that all these brass bands of unemployed ex-soldiers that blow so mournfully at all the street corners were suddenly to play nothing but a series of senseless and devilish discords—why, the first policeman would move them on, and the second would put them under arrest, and the passers-by would try to lynch them on their way to the police station. There would be a real spontaneous outcry of indignation. But when at these same street corners the contractors run up enormous palaces of steel and stone that are every bit as stupid and ignoble and inharmonious as ten brass bandsmen each playing a different tune in a different key, there is no outcry. The police don’t arrest the architect; the passing pedestrians don’t throw stones at the workmen. They don’t notice that anything’s wrong. It’s odd,” said Gumbril Senior. “It’s very odd.” “Very odd,” Gumbril Junior echoed.