"Sabre says he was knocked pretty well silly by this step. He says it was his first realisation of the attitude that everybody was going to take up against him. He went off down and saw them, and you can imagine there was a bit of a scene. He said he was dashed if he'd resign. Why on earth should he resign? Was he to resign because he was doing in common humanity what no one else had the common humanity to do? That sort of thing. You can imagine it didn't cut much ice with that crowd. The upshot of it was that Twyning, speaking for the firm, and calling him about a thousand old mans and that sort of slush, told him that the position would be reconsidered when he ceased to have the girl in his house and that, in the interests of the firm, until he did that he must cease to attend the office. "And then old Sabre said he began to find himself in exactly the same position with every one. Every door closed to him. No one having anything to do with him. Even an old chap next door, a particular friend of his called Fungus or Fargus or some such name--even this old bird's house and his society is forbidden him. Sabre says old Fungus, or whatever his name is, is all right, but it appears he's ruled by about two dozen ramping great daughters, and they won't let their father have anything to do with Sabre. No, he's shut right out, everywhere. "And Sabre, mind you--this is Sabre's extraordinary point of view: he's not a bit furious with all these people. He's feeling his position most frightfully; it's eating the very heart out of him, but he's working up not the least trace of bitterness over it. He says they're all supporting an absolutely right and just convention, and that it's not their fault if the convention is so hideously cruel in its application. He says the absolute justice and the frightful cruelty of conventions has always interested him, and that he remembers once putting up to a great friend of his as an example this very instance of society's attitude towards an unmarried girl who gets into trouble,--never dreaming that one day he was going to find himself up against the full force of it. He said, 'If this poor girl, if any girl, didn't find the world against her and every door closed to her, just look where you'd be, Hapgood. You'd have morality absolutely gone by the hoard. No, all these people are right, absolutely right--and all conventions are absolutely right--in their principle; it's their practice that's sometimes so terrible. And when it is, how can you turn round and rage? I can't.' "Well, I said to him what I say to you, old man. I said, 'Yes, that's all right, Sabre. That's true, though there're precious few would take it as moderately as you; but look here, where's this going to end? Where's it going to land you? It's landed you pretty fiercely as it is. Have you thought what it may develop into? What are you doing about it?'