When Clare was gone, Jane said, 'Wake up, old man. You can talk now.... You and Clare are stupid about each other, by the way. You'll have to get over it some time. You're ill-mannered and she's a silly fool; but ill-mannered people and silly fools can rub along together, all right, if they try.' 'I don't mind Clare,' said Gideon, rousing himself. 'I wasn't thinking about her, to say the truth. I was thinking about something else.... I'm chucking the _Fact_, Jane.' 'How d'you mean, chucking the _Fact_' Jane lit a cigarette. 'What I say. I've resigned my job on it. I'm sick of it.' 'Oh, sick.... Every one's sick of work, naturally. It's what work is for.... Well, what are you doing next? Have you been offered a better job?' 'I've not been offered a job of any sort. And I shouldn't take it if I were--not at present. I'm sick of journalism.' Jane took it calmly, lying back among the sofa cushions and smoking. 'I was afraid you were working up to this.... Of course, if you chuck the _Fact_ you take away its last chance. It'll do a nose-dive now.' 'It's doing it anyhow. I can't stop it. But I'm jolly well not going to nose-dive with it. I'm clearing out.' 'You're giving up the fight, then. Caving in. Putting your hands up to Potterism.' She was taunting him, in her cool, unmoved, leisurely tones. 'I'm clearing out,' he repeated, emphasising the phrase, and his black eyes seemed to look into distances. 'Running away, if you like. This thing's too strong for me to fight. I can't do it. Clare's quite right. It's tremendous. It will last. And the Pinkerton press only represents one tiny part of it. If the Pinkerton press were all, it would be fightable. But look at the _Fact_--a sworn enemy of everything the Pinkerton press stands for, politically, but fighting it with its own weapons--muddled thinking, sentimentality, prejudice, loose cant phrases. I tell you there'll hardly be a halfpenny to choose between the Pinkerton press and the _Fact_, by the time Peacock's done with it.... It's not Peacock's fault--except that he's weak. It's not the Syndicate's fault--except that they don't want to go on losing money for ever. It's the pressure of public demand and atmosphere. Atmosphere even more than demand. Human minds are delicate machines. How can they go on working truly and precisely and scientifically, with all this poisonous gas floating round them? Oh, well, I suppose there are a few minds still which do; even some journalists and politicians keep their heads; but what's the use against the pressure? To go in for journalism or for public life is to put oneself deliberately into the thick of the mess without being able to clean it up.' 'After all,' said Jane, more moderately, 'it's all a joke. Everything is. The world is.' 'A rotten bad joke.' 'You think things matter. You take anti-Potterism seriously, as some people take Potterism.' 'Things are serious. Things do matter,' said the Russian Jew.