e away its last chance. It'll do a nose-dive now.'

'It's doing it anyhow. I can't stop it. But I'm jolly well not going to
nose-dive with it. I'm clearing out.'

'You're giving up the fight, then. Caving in. Putting your hands up to
Potterism.'

She was taunting him, in her cool, unmoved, leisurely tones.

'I'm clearing out,' he repeated, emphasising the phrase, and his black
eyes seemed to look into distances. 'Running away, if you like. This
thing's too strong for me to fight. I can't do it. Clare's quite right.
It's tremendous. It will last. And the Pinkerton press only represents
one tiny part of it. If the Pinkerton press were all, it would be
fightable. But look at the _Fact_--a sworn enemy of everything the
Pinkerton press stands for, politically, but fighting it with its own
weapons--muddled thinking, sentimentality, prejudice, loose cant phrases.
I tell you there'll hardly be a halfpenny to choose between the Pinkerton
press and the _Fact_, by the time Peacock's done with it.... It's not
Peacock's fault--except that he's weak. It's not the Syndicate's
fault--except that they don't want to go on losing money for ever. It's
the pressure of public demand and atmosphere. Atmosphere even more than
demand. Human minds are delicate machines. How can they go on working
truly and precisely and scientifically, with all this poisonous gas
floating round them? Oh, well, I suppose there are a few minds still
which do; even some journalists and politicians keep their heads; but
what's the use against the pressure? To go in for journalism or for
public life is to put oneself deliberately into the thick of the mess
without being able to clean it up.'

'After all,' said Jane, more moderately, 'it's all a joke. Everything is.
The world is.'

'A rotten bad joke.'

'You think things matter. You take anti-Potterism seriously, as some
people take Potterism.'

'Things are serious. Things do matter,' said the Russian Jew.

Jane looked at him kindly. She was a year younger than he was, but felt
five years older to-night.

'Well, what's the remedy then?'

He said, wearily, 'Oh, education, I suppose. Education. There's nothing
else. _Learning_.' He said the word with affection, lingering on it,
striking his hand on the sofa-back to emphasise it.

'Learning, learning, learning. There's nothing else.... We should drop
all this talking and writing. All this confused, uneducated mass of
self-expression. Self-expression, with