ferent motive
force. And them checking that again, comes strong emotion, such as love
or hate, overthrowing everything and making chaos. Of course, you may say
these interacting forces are all elements that should be known and
reckoned with beforehand, and it is quite true. That is just the trouble:
one doesn't know enough.

Though I don't study human nature with the absorption of Laurence Juke
(after all, it's his trade), I find it interesting, like other curious
branches of study. And the more complex and unreliable it is, so much the
more interesting. I'm much more interested, for instance, in Arthur
Gideon, who is surprising and incalculable, than in Jane and Johnny
Potter, who are pushed along almost entirely by one motive--greed. I'm
even less interested in Jane and Johnny than in the rest of their family,
who are the usual British mixture of humbug, sentimentality,
commercialism, and genuine feeling. They represent Potterism, and
Potterism is a wonderful thing. The twins are far too clear-headed to be
Potterites in that sense. You really can, on almost any occasion, say how
they will act. So they are rather dull, as a study, though amusing enough
as companions.

But Arthur Gideon is full of twists and turns and surprises. He is one of
those rare people who can really throw their whole selves into a
cause--lose themselves for it and not care. (Jukie says that's Christian:
I dare say it is: it is certainly seldom enough found in the world, and
that seems to be an essential quality of all the so-called Christian
virtues, as far as one can see.)

Anyhow, Arthur's passion for truth, his passion for the first-rate, and
his distaste for untruth and for the second-rate, seemed to be the
supreme motive forces in him, all the years I have known him, until
just lately.

And then something else came in, apparently stronger than these forces.

Of course, I knew a long time ago--certainly since he left the army--that
he was in love with Jane. I knew it long before he did. It was a queer
feeling, for it went on, apparently, side by side with impatience and
scorn of her. And it grew and grew. Jane's marriage made it worse. She
worked for him, and they met constantly. And at last it got so that we
all saw it.

And all the time he didn't like her, because she was second-rate and
commercial, and he was first-rate and an artist--an artist in the sense
that he loved things for what they were, not for what he could get out of