Such then was the spiritual adolescence of Philip Massel, and such, as lately described, the situation which was its inevitable result--a result not wholly unforeseen by one or two minor characters in the drama of his boyhood. In some senses the intellectual was the more spectacular element of his development; but the budding of his physical faculties, the suffusion of all his blood with sex, proceeded pauselessly through this troubled time. The strands of growth are, of course, inextricably intertwined, and this account has followed too rigidly the threads of Philip's spiritual history. It must return, therefore, to a phase which only by a little space followed the emergence of Socialism above Philip's horizon, and by a little space preceded that episode with Bertha which demonstrated his curious simplicity. We turn then to a budding in Doomington Road. A group straggle within and without the rays of a lamp which illuminates a corner formed by Walton Street and the road itself. There is much tittering, a little whispering, and a youth raucously is singing! _Press your lips on my lips, Your dear little, queer little, shy lips._ It was only ten minutes ago that Policeman Pig-nob (as he is derisively termed) passed this way, with basest intentions upon Aphrodite. It is nought to him whether there be a gathering together for the mere barren breeding of money or for a far holier purpose--the ultimate propagation of an antique race. Any gathering together at any street corner suggests to him disrespect towards the corpulent Doomington abstraction who is the Chief Constable, and is liable to be misinterpreted as an incipient movement against the Monarchy and Balmoral, (which he inaccurately places in the Strand near the lofty pillar where Cleopatra stands with a blind eye and a cocked hat looking towards the City Temple; for Policeman Pig-nob is a Free Churchman and to him the City Temple is almost unsurpassed in sacredness by the Chief Constable's detached villa itself or His Britannic Majesty's Balmoral). It is, I have recorded, but ten minutes ago that Policeman Pig-nob passed this way and dispersed the Aphrodisiac gathering. The males folded their tents like the Arabs and as silently stole away. The females, having ascertained even so soon the Sanctuary which is their flesh, stood their ground. Imagine, therefore, their horror when Policeman Pig-nob, not merely with policiary rudeness, shone his bull's-eye into their faces, (decorated in two cases with pink face-powder and in one with mauve), but, forsooth, pulled the admired hair of one of their number; and not, finally, Janey's hair or Ethel's or Lily's somewhat skimpy hair, but, I adjure you, Edie's very hair! Edie's! The lovely thick brown hair of the Queen of Walton Street! Not that Janey, Ethel, Lily and their attendant virgins were not madly jealous of Edie and her positively cattish success with the boys, but really ... the rights of the sex.... Policeman Pig-nob ...