"Don't you see? Don't you see?" he shouted. "Don't you see that we have created her? Even if you drop the myth and take to evolution, don't you see that woman has been nothing but the creature, the instrument of reproduction? Don't you see that man fell in love with her, and with his love slowly humanized her, gave her intelligence, humor, charm?" "Might it not be," said René, "that woman was first, and evolved man to do the work so that she might reserve more energy for conception? And again, there seems no reason for imagining that either came first. The difference in sex is a great deal more superficial than is generally supposed. It must be. It is aggravated by environment and habit, training and physical processes, but it is not a fundamental difference." Kilner said: "You may be right. You sometimes are. But for the purpose of my picture Eve must be stupidly beautiful, just beauty and nothing else. If you like I'll paint another Adam and Eve when he has begun to love her, and through love has come to the desire of knowledge. But I'm afraid her eyes will still be stupid, and she will still think him rather a fool for desiring anything but her." X AN ENCOUNTER Nous ne dépendons point des constitutions ni des chartes, mais des instincts et des moeurs. INTELLECTUAL conversation is a very common vice among men who have been subjected to what is called education. The wages of it is commonly a brutal onslaught by the body upon the mind. The intellectual is subject to accesses of bestiality unknown to the manual laborer, who for that reason regards the cultured man with more amusement and contempt than respect and envy. It was impossible for René to surrender to his exasperated senses. He was too certain of his goal for that, though he could not on any side perceive a way that should lead him to it. Ann was devoting herself entirely to Rita and her family. She would emerge now and then to inspect him, and to make sure that he was not straying from the path of good sense. She scolded him roundly for his all-night sitting with Kilner--(she had seen the lighted window at two o'clock)--much as the other women in the mews rated their men for drinking or betting. Having delivered herself, she returned to her usual attitude of indulgence and affection, kissed him, tidied his hair and went back to her charges. That might have satisfied a navvy, but it did not satisfy René. He was still mentally inflamed with Kilner's talk, and he wanted very much to know if Ann thought him a fool for desiring anything but her. He was fairly sure she did, but he wanted to be thoroughly, painfully sure. The old reaction, you perceive, from visionary enthusiasm to disgust.