“So there I am fixed with my bourgeoise in my skin, _dans ma peau_. What is the next step?—The body is the main thing.—But I think I have made a discovery. In sex I am romantic and _arriéré_. It would be healthier for all sex to be so. But that is another matter. Well, I cannot see myself attracted by an exceptional woman—‘spiritual’ woman—‘noble soul,’ or even a particularly refined and witty animal.—I do not understand attraction for such beings.—Their existence appears to me quite natural and proper, but, not being as fine as men; not being as fine as pictures or poems; not being as fine as housewives or classical Mothers of Men; they appear to me to occupy an unfortunate position on this earth. No man properly demarcated as I am will have much to do with them. They are very beautiful to look at. But they are unfortunately alive, and usually cats. If you married one of them, out of pity, you would have to support the eternal grin of a Gioconda fixed complacently on you at all hours of the day, the pretensions of a piece of canvas that had sold for thirty thousand pounds. You could not put your foot through the canvas without being hanged. You would not be able to sell it yourself for that figure, and so get some little compensation. _Tout au plus_, if the sentimental grin would not otherwise come off, you could break its jaw, perhaps.” Butcher flung his head up, and laughed affectedly. “Ha ha!”—he went again. “Very good!—Very good!—I know who you’re thinking of,” he said. “Do you? Oh, the ‘Gioconda smile,’ you mean?—Yes.—In that instance, the man had only his silly sentimental self to blame. He has paid the biggest price given in our time for a _living_ masterpiece. Sentimentalizing about masterpieces and _sentimental prices_ will soon have seen their day, I expect. New masterpieces in painting will then appear again, perhaps, where the live ones leagued with the old dead ones disappear.—Really, the more one considers it, the more creditable and excellent my self-organization appears. I have a great deal to congratulate myself upon.” Butcher blinked and pulled himself together with a grave dissatisfied expression. “But will you carry it into effect to the extent?—Will you?—Would marriage be the ideal termination?”—Butcher had a way of tearing up and beginning all over again on a new breath. “That is what Hobson asked.—No, I don’t think marriage has anything to do with it. That is another question altogether.” “I thought your remarks about the housewife suggested⸺” “No.—My relation to the idea of the housewife is platonic. I am attracted to the housewife as I might be attracted to the milliner. But just as I should not necessarily employ the latter to make hats—I should have some other use for her—so my connexion with the other need not imply a _ménage_. But my present difficulty centres round that question: “What am I to do with Fräulein Lunken?” Butcher drew himself up, and hiccuped solemnly and slowly. He did not reply.