"Now for processes of vivisection. It's the most original fashion of paying succession duty I ever heard of. My word, if I ever do come into possession, won't I just open the windows in this house!" V The conversation that evening did not move very smoothly. Laurence brought all the good temper and practical philosophy at his command into play. But the elder man was captious. His blank scepticism, his keen, unsparing statements jarred on his companion. An inclination towards revolt arose in Laurence. "I am half afraid, sir," he permitted himself to say at last, while his eyes rested on the gleaming breasts of the ebony sphinxes,--"that we have made a radical mistake and put the cart before the horse. To understand the average man, and his relation to things in general, must not you begin with the study of the average woman? Is not _cherchez la femme_, after all, the keynote of our inquiry?" Mr. Rivers raised his thin hand almost as in warning, and the heavy finger-rings chinked as he let it fall again on the arm of his chair. "The subject of sex in connection with human beings is distasteful to me," he said. Laurence glanced at the speaker and then back at the carven sphinx again. His eyes were a little merry--he could not help it. "Oh! no doubt," he said; "there are times when it is distasteful to many of us, and most infernally inconvenient into the bargain. Only you see, unluckily, it is the pivot on which the whole history of the race turns." "A most objectionable pivot! An insult to the intellect, a degradation." "That may be so," Laurence answered. "Still the thing is there--always has been, always will be, modern science notwithstanding, unless humanity agrees to voluntary and universal suicide, a consummation which does not seem immediately probable in any case.--'Male and female created He them.' An error perhaps of judgment, but one the Creator has never shown much sign of wishing to correct as yet. The most venerable religious systems recognise this. I need not remind you that it lies at the heart of their mysteries. Christianity too--Catholic Christianity--the only form, that is, of Christianity worth considering seriously--acknowledges the profound significance of it in the worship of the divine motherhood and the perpetually renewed miracle of the Incarnation." "You interest me," Mr. Rivers said slowly. "I am glad of that," Laurence answered. He had warmed up unexpectedly to his subject. "I am glad of that, for I can't help seeing--" Mr. Rivers interrupted him.