Herbert sat round in his chair. ‘You see, Lawford, the very term is little else than Double-Dutch to me. As a matter of fact Grisel sends all my hush-money to the horrible people that do the cleaning up, as it were. I can’t catch their drift. Government to me is merely the spectacle of the clever, or the specious, managing the dull. It deals merely with the physical, and just the fringe of consciousness. I am not joking. I think I follow you. All I mean is that the obligations—mainly tepid, I take it—that are luring you back to the fold would be the very ones that would scare me quickest off. The imagination, the appeal faded: we’re dead.’ Lawford opened his mouth; ‘_Temporarily_ tepid,’ he at last all but coughed out. ‘Oh yes, of course,’ said Herbert intelligently. ‘Only temporarily. It’s this beastly gregariousness that’s the devil. The very thought of it undoes me—with an absolute shock of sheepishness. I suddenly realise my human nakedness: that here we are, little better than naked animals, bleating behind our illusory wattles on the slopes of—of infinity. And nakedness, after all, is a wholesome thing to realize only when one thinks too much of one’s clothes. I peer sometimes, feebly enough, out of my wool, and it seems to me that all these busybodies, all these fact-devourers, all this news-reading rabble, are nothing brighter than very dull-witted children trying to play an imaginative game, much too deep for their poor reasons. I don’t mean that _your_ wanting to go home is anything gregarious, but I do think _their_ insisting on your coming back at once might be. And I know you won’t visit this stuff on me as anything more than just my “scum,” as Grisel calls the fine flower of my maiden meditations. All that I really _want_ to say is that we should both be more than delighted if you’d stay just as long as it will not be a bore for you to stay. Stay till you’re heartily tired of us. Go back now, if you _must_; tell them how much better you are. Bolt off to a nerve specialist. He’ll say complete rest—change of scene, and all that. They all do. Instinct via intellect. And why not take your rest here? We are such miserably dull company to one another it would be a greater pleasure to have you with us than I can say. I mean it from the very bottom of my heart. Do!’ Lawford listened. ‘I wish—,’ he began, and stopped dead again. ‘Anyhow, I’ll go back. I am afraid, Herbert, I’ve been playing truant. It was all very well while—To tell you the truth I can’t think _quite_ straight yet. But it won’t last for ever. Besides—well, anyhow, I’ll go back.’ ‘Right you are,’ said Herbert, pretending to be cheerful. ‘You can’t expect, you really can’t, everything to come right straight away. Just have patience. And now, let’s go out and sit in the sun. They’ve mixed September up with May.’ And about half an hour afterwards he glanced up from his book to find his visitor fast asleep in his garden chair.