“That was another lot of intuitive guys; and a very neat trick they played on us. They saw that once the Anglo-Saxon, with his fine, big sporting instinct, got hold of the idea that holiness meant spreading out and living out in all manly directions—and by that I don’t mean giving free rein to one’s appetites, of course—but they saw that once the idea became plain to us the triumph of lust would be lost. So they inserted that little bluffing, blinding ‘w,’ which doesn’t belong there at all, to put us off the scent; and off the scent we went. Church and state and human society have all combined to make holiness one of the most anemic, flat-chested words in the language, when it’s really a synonym of normality.” We exchanged these thoughts in the narrow hall of the club, as he happened to be passing, and stopped for a few words. It was always his way. He never treated us to long and formal interviews. From a handclasp and a few chance sentences we got the secret of a personality which gave out its light and heat like radium, without effort and without exhaustion. “What do yer think ’e says to me?” Lovey demanded of me one day. “‘Lovey,’ says ’e, ‘yer’ve got a terr’ble responsibility on ye with that young fella, Slim. If you go under ’e goes under, and if you keep straight ’e keeps straight.’ What do yer think of that?” “I think you’re doing an awful lot for me, Lovey.” He slapped his leg. “Ye got that number right, old son. There’s nobody else in the world I’d ’a’ done it for. If you ’adn’t taken a fancy to me, like, that night, and arsked me to go ’ome with you—But, say, Slim,” he went on, confidentially, “wouldn’t you like to ’ave a drink?” Wouldn’t I like to have a drink? There was thirst in the very rustle of Lovey’s throat. There was the same thirst in my own. It was more than a thirst of the appetite—it was a thirst of the being, of whatever had become myself. It was one of the moments at which the lost identity seemed farther away than ever, and the Frank Melbury of the last three years the man in possession. I couldn’t, however, let Lovey see that. “Oh, one gets used to going without drinks.” “Do ye? I don’t. I’d take a drink of ’air-oil if anybody’d give me one. I’d take a drink of ink. Anything that comes out of a bottle’d be better’n nothink, after all this water from a jug.”