sn't very clear to Benham. His mind had been
preoccupied by the problem of how to open his own large project.
Meanwhile Prothero got, as it were, the conversational bit between his
teeth and bolted. He began to say the most shocking things right away,
so that Benham's attention was caught in spite of himself.

"Inflammatory classics."

"What's that?"

"Celibacy, my dear Benham, is maddening me," said Prothero. "I can't
stand it any longer."

It seemed to Benham that somewhere, very far away, in another world,
such a statement might have been credible. Even in his own life,--it was
now indeed a remote, forgotten stage--there had been something distantly
akin....

"You're going to marry?"

"I must."

"Who's the lady, Billy?"

"I don't know. Venus."

His little red-brown eye met his friend's defiantly. "So far as I know,
it is Venus Anadyomene." A flash of laughter passed across his face
and left it still angrier, still more indecorously defiant. "I like her
best, anyhow. I do, indeed. But, Lord! I feel that almost any of them--"

"Tut, tut!" said Benham.

Prothero flushed deeply but stuck to his discourse.

"Wasn't it always your principle, Benham, to look facts in the face? I
am not pronouncing an immoral principle. Your manner suggests I am. I
am telling you exactly how I feel. That is how I feel. I want--Venus.
I don't want her to talk to or anything of that sort.... I have been
studying that book, yes, that large, vulgar, red book, all the morning,
instead of doing any work. Would you like to see it?... NO!...

"This spring, Benham, I tell you, is driving me mad. It is a peculiarly
erotic spring. I cannot sleep, I cannot fix my mind, I cannot attend
to ordinary conversation. These feelings, I understand, are by no means
peculiar to myself.... No, don't interrupt me, Benham; let me talk now
that the spirit of speech is upon me. When you came in you said, 'How
are you?' I am telling you how I am. You brought it on yourself. Well--I
am--inflamed. I have no strong moral or religious convictions to assist
me either to endure or deny this--this urgency. And so why should I deny
it? It's one of our chief problems here. The majority of my fellow
dons who look at me with secretive faces in hall and court and
combination-room are in just the same case as myself. The fever in
oneself detects the fever in others. I know their hidden thoughts. Their
fishy eyes defy me to challenge their hidden thoughts. Each cover