“Dear Frank, it is no use saying ‘please,’” cried she; “Helen is behaving idiotically. She ought to have smoothed the Bear down somehow; deceived him for the sake of his comfort. Martin, I think, would deceive his friends to make them comfortable. Considering how dreadfully uncomfortable life is, the first duty towards our neighbour is to try to make things pleasant. You, too, Frank, you have no tact. You ought to have said the Ten Commandments, or whatever it is, very loud, in the vulgar tongue, when you went to the Bear’s church, and then there wouldn’t have been any question at all. I would be a Parsee or a Plymouth sister to-morrow if it would make Sunningdale groan less. He has taken to groaning. I suppose his mind hurts him, as he says he’s quite well.” “Did you say that I would deceive people to make them comfortable?” asked Martin. “Yes; at least I hope you would. But you Challoners are all slightly cracked, I think. You owe your vividness to that. You, Helen, your father, all see things out of their real proportion.” “Have you ever seen Aunt Susan?” asked Martin. “No; is she dreadful?” “Not at all, but not vivid. It was she who really made Helen go home and live there.” “Then your Aunt Susan is a very stupid person,” said Lady Sunningdale. “My dear, there are only two sorts of people in the world, the clever and the stupid. Nobody is good, nobody is bad. At least, they may be for all that it matters, but goodness and badness in themselves have no result. There is nothing more colourless than moral qualities; it is only brains that give colour to them. Do you choose your friends because they are good? I am sorry for you. Of course, I don’t want you to choose them because they are bad. The one is as idiotic as the other. But brains! There is nothing else in the world, and very little of that. And moral qualities are like corsets. If they are tight they hinder free development, and if they are loose, you might as well not wear them at all.” Lady Sunningdale had taken her feet off the bed during this remarkable speech and looked more closely at Martin. “Your forehead is bulging, Martin,” she said, “and your hair is dipping like a plume into your left eye. That happens, I notice, when you play, and it means you are thinking. So you are thinking now. What is it?” Martin did not deny the soft impeachment. “Yes, I was thinking,” he said. “I don’t imagine that what I was thinking about would interest you in the least.” Lady Sunningdale made a gesture of despair. “Haven’t you grasped the elementary fact,” she said, “that anything anybody thinks about is deeply interesting? All the events of the world--who said it--take place in the brain. Sahara, darling, I am not a mutton bone, nor are my rings good to eat. Suez, how tiresome! And I hadn’t read a page of it! Yes; what were you thinking about, Martin?” Martin lit a cigarette from a smoked-down stump before he replied.