Lypiatt had turned his eyes heavenwards. “What stars,” he said, “and what prodigious gaps between the stars!” “A real light opera summer night.” And Mercaptan began to sing, in fragmentary German, the ‘Barcarolle’ from the _Tales of Hoffmann_. “Liebe Nacht, du schöne Nacht, oh stille mein tumpty-tum. Te, tum, Te tum.... Delicious Offenbach. Ah, if only we could have a third Empire! Another comic Napoleon! That would make Paris look like Paris again. Tiddy, tumpty-ti-tum.” They walked along without any particular destination, but simply for the sake of walking through this soft cool night. Coleman led the way, tapping the pavement at every step with the ferrule of his stick. “The blind leading the blind,” he explained. “Ah, if only there were a ditch, a crevasse, a great hole full of stinging centipedes and dung. How gleefully I should lead you all into it!” “I think you would do well,” said Shearwater gravely, “to go and see a doctor.” Coleman gave vent to a howl of delight. “Does it occur to you,” he went on, “that at this moment we are walking through the midst of seven million distinct and separate individuals, each with distinct and separate lives and all completely indifferent to our existence? Seven million people, each one of whom thinks himself quite as important as each of us does. Millions of them are now sleeping in an empested atmosphere. Hundreds of thousands of couples are at this moment engaged in mutually caressing one another in a manner too hideous to be thought of, but in no way differing from the manner in which each of us performs, delightfully, passionately and beautifully, his similar work of love. Thousands of women are now in the throes of parturition, and of both sexes thousands are dying of the most diverse and appalling diseases, or simply because they have lived too long. Thousands are drunk, thousands have over-eaten, thousands have not had enough to eat. And they are all alive, all unique and separate and sensitive, like you and me. It’s a horrible thought. Ah, if I could lead them all into that great hole of centipedes.” He tapped and tapped on the pavement in front of him, as though searching for the crevasse. At the top of his voice he began to chant: “O all ye Beasts and Cattle, curse ye the Lord: curse him and vilify him for ever.” “All this religion,” sighed Mercaptan. “What with Lypiatt on one side, being a muscular Christian artist, and Coleman on the other, howling the black mass.... Really!” He elaborated an Italianate gesture, and turned to Zoe. “What do you think of it all?” he asked. Zoe jerked her head in Coleman’s direction. “I think e’s a bloody swine,” she said. They were the first words she had spoken since she had joined the party. “Hear, hear!” cried Coleman, and he waved his stick.