"Who do you mean?" asked Alec, who, now that the practical matter had been discharged and they were once more entering the immaterial world of thought, reassumed the elderliness of his voice and manner. "Who do you mean, vague youth, is a swine? The inspector!" "No! The father!" "Yes, I'm with you! But what about the mother?" "Fancy a mother behaving like that!" Philip wondered. "That's just what I mean! The woman behaved perfectly naturally. Parents only keep their children because other people do. They're not really interested in children. My parents are not interested in me and I'm not fearfully interested in them. It's only a sort of crust of habit, and the parents of this child wouldn't allow it to form. John Smith and Mary Brown, let's call them. I declare that John Smith and Mary Brown are just natural and sensible people--they had their fling--Body, Sex! That's to-night's party and John Smith and Edie and the baby in the cradle all reduced to their elements! Body, Sex! It's as simple as an equation in Algebra!" (Alec invariably ended his ratiocinations with a flick of the fingers--a 'so easy, you know'!) The incident had filled Harry with nausea. The disillusionment at the party, the check to his pride it had involved, the callous abandonment of the child in the bare croft, had combined to produce in him an indignation of cynicism. "You're right!" he declared. "It's Sex, pure and simple! It's all dirt!" "And you, Philip?" "What do I know about it? Go on!" Philip listened, fascinated and repelled. At least the philosophy of Segal offered a coherent explanation of to-night and the other nights. The whole theme was virgin to him, but the method of attack was so deadly calm, so impersonal, that he was impelled to follow. He was conscious, moreover, that other people, not least Harry and Alec, did not exclude this branch of life from their horizon; why, then, should he? It was all so different from the filth of Angel Street; here, if soul played no part or little in this interpretation, mind at least was not absent. There was, he did not dare to confess to himself, a quaint furtive pleasure in it all.... "Go on!" he said, breathless to advance, and half-inclined to flee.