he race...."

A vision of women made responsible floated before his eyes.

"Is that man working better since you got hold of him? If not, why not?"

"Or again,--Jane Smith was charged with neglecting her lover to the
common danger.... The inspector said the man was in a pitiful state,
morally quite uncombed and infested with vulgar, showy ideas...."

The doctor laughed, telescoped his pencil and stood up.

Section 7

It became evident after dinner that Sir Richmond also had been thinking
over the afternoon's conversation.

He and Dr. Martineau sat in wide-armed cane chairs on the lawn with a
wickerwork table bearing coffee cups and little glasses between them. A
few other diners chatted and whispered about similar tables but not too
close to our talkers to disturb them; the dining room behind them had
cleared its tables and depressed its illumination. The moon, in its
first quarter, hung above the sunset, sank after twilight, shone
brighter and brighter among the western trees, and presently had gone,
leaving the sky to an increasing multitude of stars. The Maidenhead
river wearing its dusky blue draperies and its jewels of light had
recovered all the magic Sir Richmond had stripped from it in the
afternoon. The grave arches of the bridge, made complete circles by the
reflexion of the water, sustained, as if by some unifying and justifying
reason, the erratic flat flashes and streaks and glares of traffic that
fretted to and fro overhead. A voice sang intermittently and a banjo
tinkled, but remotely enough to be indistinct and agreeable.

"After all," Sir Richmond began abruptly, "the search for some sort of
sexual modus vivendi is only a means to an end. One does not want to
live for sex but only through sex. The main thing in my life has always
been my work. This afternoon, under the Maidenhead influence, I talked
too much of sex. I babbled. Of things one doesn't usually..."

"It was very illuminating," said the doctor.

"No doubt. But a temporary phase. It is the defective bearing talks....
Just now--I happen to be irritated."

The darkness concealed a faint smile on the doctor's face.

"The work is the thing," said Sir Richmond. "So long as one can keep
one's grip on it."

"What," said the doctor after a pause, leaning back and sending wreaths
of smoke up towards the star-dusted zenith, "what is your idea of your
work? I mean, how do you see it in relation to yourself--and things
generally?"

"Put i