Thousands of beautiful women have spent their lives in cloisters; there are millions of old maids. When I am with you I show a full, if not excessive, appreciation of your sex. You have a child. With a sort of lofty cunning you dote on my cleverness and improve your own. You would not be with me if you required anything much different from what you get. But still you deplore some of my notions and habits. I suspect my friend Villerant of having smiled at my naivete, and also suggested that in some things I was cracked and difficult. I will follow the line of argument that your questions imply: “Why not ease off a little?” You would say, “You will admit that it is _uncomfortable_ to be at loggerheads with _anybody_. You flatter a person by taking so much notice of him as to turn your back.” (At this point I interject: “It is nevertheless more _comfortable_ for me, in the long run, to be rude than to be polite. It is a physical discomfort not to show, after a time, my feelings.”) You continue: “Being so easily disgusted with people suggests a naive idealism. We are all ridiculous, looked at properly, by means of our little forked bodies. We are disgusting physically (except a few in their fluffy and velvety youth). So why carp, and glare, and sheer off? Take life, in the English-civilized way, as a joke; our funny bodies and their peculiar needs, our ambitions, greeds, as comic stunts of an evidently gentleman-creator, who is most unquestionably “a sport.” At this point, my dear lady, I am going to stop you, and bring in the counter-flux; release the over-mounting objections. First. I feel that we are obviously in the position of Ulysses’ companions; and there is nothing I resent more than people settling down to become what is sensible for a swine. I will still stalk about with my stumpy legs, and hold my snout high, however absurd it may be. We must get through this enchantment without too many memories of abasement. We most need, in the inner fact, _changing back into men again_! And I don’t want the “happiness” of the swill-pail, but a perpetual restlessness until the magic is over! I set out somewhere on a legendary expedition= I do not date from Nineteen Two.= I do not feel like sniggering over our plight. I am _permanently_ in a bad temper!= (I am not a “a sport.”) So! So! So! Society, most people, have their little bit of beauty and energy which is a small compartment of life. The rest is the gentleman-animal, which ambles along, the end-in-itself= oh yes!