"You've got the most interesting face of the lot," he said presently, "though that isn't saying much. What's brought you home?" She told him the whole story. "I see. Poisoning the little beast's mind with the sight of your body. I see. It's part of the game to pretend that you haven't got such a thing. Sorry, but I find it quite impossible." Annette's traditional modesty twinged, and she shifted a little uneasily on the bed. Serge marked that and went on: "Sorry. I won't talk about it if it makes you uneasy. You believe in souls and bodies separate, the soul prisoned in the vile clay, and all that. I don't. I believe that the two things are one and indivisible. If you don't believe that, you are apt to take all the surface happenings of life much too seriously, and you lose all sense of proportion and humour and make the most ridiculous messes for yourself and everybody connected with you. Superficially considered, I am a bad egg, so are you. I'm getting on towards middle-age and can't make my own living, much less prevent other people making theirs, which is what success seems to mean in commercial life. As for you, you've been thrown out of your situation without a character, and it will be extremely difficult for you to find another. Looked at a little more closely and searchingly we are seen to be two wonderful people--all people are wonderful--with immense potentialities for happiness or unhappiness. Does all this bore you?" "No. Please." "What I'm really trying to get at is that there are only two kinds of people--the people to whom everything that happens is experience, and the people who turn everything that happens to them into a form of self-indulgence, even the most horrible, even the most painful things. Our father is the first kind of person, our mother is the second. Our father was really shattered by the death of our brother James. Our mother has been feeding herself fat on it ever since. Any love that they may have shared was buried in the grave with James. More briefly, the two kinds of people are those who can love and those who cannot. Gertrude is besotted about young Lawrie, but she is quite incapable of loving him. Minna could love a certain kind of man, one who could swamp her mockery with love. There aren't many of them." Annette sat listening to him open-mouthed. He took paper and charcoal and did a rough sketch of her, but did not show it her. "I like that story," he said. "It's the most satisfactory reason I ever heard for getting thrown out of a governess' job. You can't live in a house like this, or a place like this, and live without trouble. You have to fight for your life, or lose it. I'm going to work now. Get out. Go and make Minna talk about Bennett Lawrie. She's amusing." "Thank you," said Annette. IMBROGLIO _Quisque suos patimer manes._ AENEID, vi.