“Oh, God!” cried Benham, “when will men be princes and take hold of life? When will the kingship in us wake up and come to its own?... Look at this place! Look at this place!... The easy, accessible happiness! The manifest prosperity. The newness and the sunshine. And the silly bitterness, the rage, the mischief and miseries!...” And then: “It's not our quarrel....” “It's amazing how every human quarrel draws one in to take sides. Life is one long struggle against the incidental. I can feel my anger gathering against the Government here in spite of my reason. I want to go and expostulate. I have a ridiculous idea that I ought to go off to Lord Gladstone or Botha and expostulate.... What good would it do? They move in the magic circles of their own limitations, an official, a politician--how would they put it?--'with many things to consider....' “It's my weakness to be drawn into quarrels. It's a thing I have to guard against.... “What does it all amount to? It is like a fight between navvies in a tunnel to settle the position of the Pole star. It doesn't concern us.... Oh! it doesn't indeed concern us. It's a scuffle in the darkness, and our business, the business of all brains, the only permanent good work is to light up the world.... There will be mischief and hatred here and suppression and then forgetfulness, and then things will go on again, a little better or a little worse....” “I'm tired of this place, White, and of all such places. I'm tired of the shouting and running, the beating and shooting. I'm sick of all the confusions of life's experience, which tells only of one need amidst an endless multitude of distresses. I've seen my fill of wars and disputes and struggles. I see now how a man may grow weary at last of life and its disorders, its unreal exacting disorders, its blunders and its remorse. No! I want to begin upon the realities I have made for myself. For they are the realities. I want to go now to some quiet corner where I can polish what I have learnt, sort out my accumulations, be undisturbed by these transitory symptomatic things.... “What was that boy saying? They are burning the STAR office.... Well, let them....”