"All right," said Spanton, "I'll stop. But just see how true it was, what I said about Christianity not working. You've already forgotten the instruction about the other cheek." A most irritating young man. But Lacey was quick enough for him. "Of course I shouldn't do anything so abject as that," he said. "My Christ is he who scourged the money changers out of the Temple. Come on!" "That girl's an awful nuisance," said Lacey to me a day or so after. "She's fallen in love with me. I was afraid she would. It's my destiny to attract the wrong women. She's just a poor dumb animal full of gratitude, and I haven't a notion what to do about her. Your cold-blooded young Socialist is right: one should repress one's humanitarian impulses." I asked him what he should do. "I'm wondering," he said. "She wants to be my servant and work herself to death for me. I can see the twins' faces when they find her cleaning up my room! There's only one phrase with the twins for that kind of girl--'brazen hussy.' What the good women will never understand about these others is that even in brazen hussying there are off moments when ordinary life has to be lived. Fortunately she doesn't know my address and old Dimmage won't tell her. I shall send her five pounds and say I have to go abroad for three months, and so wash my hands of her." I strongly advised him to do this and offered to contribute to the sum. But he wouldn't have it. "No," he said, "this is my show. I let myself in for it, and I must get out of it. Poor girl, I'm so sorry for her. Such a nice thing too; but hopeless, of course. When they've once tasted freedom they won't go back. How can they? What has service to offer? Do you remember how in one of Byron's letters he bursts out in disgust, 'Nothing but virtue pays in this damned world.' He was right. Nearly everyone is experimenting with vice, yet nothing but virtue really pays. The difference between virtue and the other thing may be as slight as tissue paper, but there it is, and all our social system is based on virtue. Such a nice girl too. She ought to marry a policeman and beget life-guardsmen. "There's a poem in that Chinese book you lent me," Lacey continued, "which I have learnt by heart and am trying to obey. It teaches one not to meddle. This wretched girl who is on my mind all comes of meddling, just as Spanton said. The poem--it's hundreds of years old--runs like this--it is quite short--only four lines: I wander north, I wander south, I rest me where I please... See how the river-banks are nipped beneath the autumn breeze! Yet what care I if autumn's blasts the river-banks lay bare? The loss of hue to river-banks is the river-banks' affair. That's the way to live. Go your own way and don't care a hang for anyone. I wish I could do it!