That young man set himself to discover London. He was forever coming to Gray's Inn with exciting tales of streets discovered down by the docks or in the great regions of the northern suburbs. He set himself to walk from end to end of it, from Ealing to West Ham, from Dulwich to Tottenham, and he vowed that there were men really living in it, and he began to think of the democracy as a real entity, to be exalted at the thought of its power. Old Mole demurred. The democracy had no power, since it knew not how to grasp it. Its only instrument was the vote, which was the engine of the Harbottles, the nibblers, the place-seekers, the pleasure-hunters, those who scrambled to the top of the sandy tower, where in the highest cavern there were at least air and light and only the faintest stench from the river's mud. Here there was so much divergence between Old Mole and Panoukian that they ceased to talk the same language, and Old Mole would try another tack and reach the stop-gap conclusion that the difference came about from the fact that Gray's Inn was very comfortable, while Panoukian's chambers in the Temple were bleak and bare. That was unsatisfactory, for Panoukian would inveigh against comfort and vow, as indeed was obvious, that no one had yet devised a profitable means of spending a private income of thirty thousand a year. After reading an economic treatise he came to the conclusion that the whole political problem resolved itself into the wages question. Old Mole hated problems and questions. They parched his imagination. His whole pleasure in Panoukian's society lay in the young man's power to flood ideas with his vitality. He argued on economic lines and gradually forced the young man up to the spiritual plane and then gave him his conception of society as a sand heap. That fired Panoukian. Was it or was it not necessary for human beings to live upon shifting ground, with no firm foothold? And he said that the great men had been those who had gone out into the world and brought back tales of the fair regions contained therein. "They have dreamed of fair regions," said Old Mole, "but no man has ever gone out to them." "Then," said Panoukian, "it is quite time some one did." Matilda came in on that, caught the last words, and asked hopefully: "What is it you are going to do?" "He is going," said Old Mole, "to discover the bedrock of life and live on it." "Is that all?" Matilda looked disappointed. "I hoped it was something practical at last." The two men tried to carry on the discussion, but she closured it by saying that she wanted to be taken out to dinner and amused. Panoukian flew to dress himself in ordered black and white, and Matilda said to Old Mole: "The trouble with you two is that you have too much money." "That, my dear, is the trouble with almost everybody, and, like everybody else, we sit on it and talk." "It would do you both a world of good to have some real hard, unpleasant work."