Agnes did not hear. But Pyefinch, a pallid young man with a scrubby black moustache, was too greatly occupied with his immediate circle to catch his hostess’s eye. From his profane lips Olivia learned that patriotism was the most blatant of superstitions: that the attitude of the fly preening itself over its cesspool was that of the depraved and mindless being who could take pride in being an Englishman. He was not peculiarly hard on England. All other countries were the mere sewerages of the nationalities that inhabited them. The high ideals supposed to crystallize a nation’s life were but factitious and illusory, propagated by poets and other decadents in the pay of capitalists: in reality, patriotism only meant the common cause of the peoples floundering each in its separate sewer. . . . Mere rats, he declared, changing his metaphor. That was why he and every other intelligent man in the country refused to join in the rat fight which was the late war. Olivia clutched Triona’s arm. “For God’s sake, Alexis, let us get out of this. It makes me sick.” They drew deep breaths when they escaped into the fresh air. To Olivia, the little overcrowded drawing-room, deafening with loud voices, sour with the smell of milky tea and Virginian tobacco, reeking almost physically with the madness of anarchy, seemed a miniature of the bottomless pit. The irony of the man’s talk—the need to purify by flame a plague-stricken area! God once destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Why did He not blast with fire from heaven this House of Pestilence? Alexis Triona laughed sympathetically at her outburst. “I confess they’re rather trying,” he remarked. “Whenever you hear English people say they belong to the _intelligentsia_, you may be sure they’re frightened at common sense as not being intellectual enough. Blenkiron and Dawkins are fools of the first water; but Pyefinch is dangerous. I am afraid I lost my temper,” he added after a few steps. “You were splendid,” said Olivia.