rows up this is the business Man has to
settle down to and will settle down to."

She considered that.

"I've been getting to believe something like this. But--... it frightens
me. I suppose most of us have this same sort of dread of taking too much
upon ourselves."

"So we just live like pigs. Sensible little piggywiggys. I've got a
Committee full of that sort of thing. We live like little modest pigs.
And let the world go hang. And pride ourselves upon our freedom from the
sin of presumption.

"Not quite that!"

"Well! How do you put it?"

"We are afraid," she said. "It's too vast. We want bright little lives
of our own."

"Exactly--sensible little piggy-wiggys."

"We have a right to life--and happiness.

"First," said Sir Richmond, "as much right as a pig has to food. But
whether we get life and happiness or fail to get them we human beings
who have imaginations want something more nowadays.... Of course we want
bright lives, of course we want happiness. Just as we want food, just as
we want sleep. But when we have eaten, when we have slept, when we have
jolly things about us--it is nothing. We have been made an exception
of--and got our rations. The big thing confronts us still. It is vast,
I agree, but vast as it is it is the thing we have to think about. I
do not know why it should be so, but I am compelled by something in my
nature to want to serve this idea of a new age for mankind. I want it
as my culminating want. I want a world in order, a disciplined mankind
going on to greater things. Don't you?"

"Now you tell me of it," she said with a smile, "I do."

"But before--?"

"No. You've made it clear. It wasn't clear before."

"I've been talking of this sort of thing with my friend Dr. Martineau.
And I've been thinking as well as talking. That perhaps is why I'm so
clear and positive."

"I don't complain that you are clear and positive. I've been coming
along the same way.... It's refreshing to meet you."

"I found it refreshing to meet Martineau." A twinge of conscience about
Dr. Martineau turned Sir Richmond into a new channel. "He's a most
interesting man," he said. "Rather shy in some respects. Devoted to his
work. And he's writing a book which has saturated him in these ideas.
Only two nights ago we stood here and talked about it. The Psychology of
a New Age. The world, he believes, is entering upon a new phase in its
history, the adolescence, so to speak, of mankind. It is an idea that