"I'm as solemn as an owl!" Tietjens rejoined. "The lower classes are becoming vocal. Why shouldn't they? They're the only people in this country who are sound in wind and limb. They'll save the country if the country's to be saved." "And you call yourself a Tory!" Macmaster said. "The lower classes," Tietjens continued equably, "such of them as get through the secondary schools, want irregular and very transitory unions. During holidays they go together on personally-conducted tours to Switzerland and such places. Wet afternoons they pass in their tiled bathrooms, slapping each other hilariously on the backs and splashing white enamel paint about." "You say you don't read novels," Macmaster said, "but I recognise the quotation." "I don't _read_ novels," Tietjens answered. "I know what's in 'em. There has been nothing worth _reading_ written in England since the eighteenth century except by a woman. . . . But it's natural for your enamel splashers to want to see themselves in a bright and variegated literature. Why shouldn't they? It's a healthy, human desire, and now that printing and paper are cheap they get it satisfied. It's healthy, I tell you. Infinitely healthier than . . ." He paused. "Than what?" Macmaster asked. "I'm thinking," Tietjens said, "thinking how not to be too rude." "You want to be rude," Macmaster said bitterly, "to people who lead the contemplative . . . the circumspect life." "It's precisely that," Tietjens said. He quoted: "'She walks the lady of, my delight, A shepherdess of sheep; She is so circumspect and right: She has her thoughts to keep.'" Macmaster said: "Confound you, Chrissie. You know everything." "Well, yes," Tietjens said musingly, "I think I should want to be rude to her. I don't say I should be. Certainly I shouldn't if she were good looking. Or if she were your soul's affinity. You can rely on that." Macmaster had a sudden vision of Tietjens' large and clumsy form walking beside the lady of his, Macmaster's, delight, when ultimately she was found--walking along the top of a cliff amongst tall grass and poppies and making himself extremely agreeable with talk of Tasso and Cimabue. All the same, Macmaster imagined, the lady wouldn't like Tietjens. Women didn't as a rule. His looks and his silences alarmed them. Or they hated him. . . . Or they liked him very much indeed. And Macmaster said conciliatorily: "Yes, I think I could rely on that!" He added: "All the same I don't wonder that . . ." He had been about to say: "I don't wonder that Sylvia calls you immoral." For Tietjens' wife alleged that Tietjens was detestable. He bored her, she said, by his silences; when he did speak she hated him for the immorality of his views. . . . But he did not finish his sentence, and Tietjens went on: "All the same when the war comes it will be these little snobs who will save England, because they've the courage to know what they want and to say so." Macmaster said loftily: