They are inseparable. My friend Jules de Gaultier's philosophy is sound. Bovarysme, or the desire of man to appear other than he is. The eternal illusion. The divine humbuggery." "Hypocrisy is, as you say, necessary to screen certain unpleasant realities, Ulick. It is a pia fraus; painted veils! painted lies. People who will persist in crudely naming unmentionable matters usually end in jail or in the lunatic asylum. Back to 'our mutton'. Why don't you marry? Believe me, the humdrum life of a bourgeois will give you the proper atmosphere for your studies. Think of your Flaubert and his labourious life, with its colourless background. He urged the young writer to be ascetic in his life, that he could be all the more violent in his art. Vance Thompson's advice is sound: Artists should marry women with the feather-bed temperament. Why are you looking like that at me, Ulick?" Ulick only smiled, but there was a covert sneer in the smile that caused Milt to blush. "Honestly, entre-nous, Milt, you know more than a specialist in psychopathy. Now tell me, I'll keep it secret, how do you contrive to stay clear of the petticoats? It's a personal question, but I dare put it because you are so frank with me as to my own soul-hygiene. You are such an old soul-sniffer!" Milt didn't hesitate. "I pray. Prayer, naught else. Lead us not into temptation. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. All the talk of psychologists about transposing the nervous fluid to the brain would be mere wind, were it not for prayer. Faith moves mountains. Volition is born of humility and prayer. That's my secret, and it's the secret of every priest. But just to show you, Ulick, that we do not necessarily violate the laws of nature, let me quote two phrases which I copied in my note book concerning sex. In his 'L'Egoisme, base de toute Société' Felix Le Dantec makes rather astonishing statements, and what's more, proves their validity. The first is this: 'lacte sexual n'est pas un phénomène vital,' in a word, this act so often sung of by the poets, this act which assures the continuity of life, is a drama in which the living are not the chief actors; the spermatazoa and the ova are. The second proposition is: 'Les éléments sexuels sont morts.' Neither one can live by itself. Nature, prompted by the divine design brings them together in the inexpressible act, an act that even the lowest of humans always seeks the darkness to consummate. Which is a salutary hypocrisy." Ulick calmly took a book down and remarked: "Here is Le Dantec himself. But you don't quote what he says of the 'gamète' the unfecundated sexual cells, poisoning a man swifter than does absinthe. In a word, Milt, the sexes separated are unnatural, and joined, whether in wedlock or concubinage--bedlock is the ultimate outcome--they are natural, healthy. Waldstein, Ekler and other biologists have proved that the sperma of the male actually enters into the veinal circulation of the woman.