. Hence there is no tragedy, or no appreciation of tragedy,
which is the same thing. We had been talking of young Bistwick, who
three months ago married his mother's housemaid and now is aware of the
fact. Who appreciates the truth of the matter? Not the relatives, for
they are only moved by affection, by regard for Bistwick's interests,
and chiefly by their collective feeling of family disgrace. Not the
generous minded and thoughtful outsider, who regards it merely as
evidence for the necessity of divorce law reform. Bistwick is classed
among the unhappily married. But what Bistwick feels when he wakes up
in the morning, which is the great important fact, no detached outsider
conceives. The awful importance of the ruin of a life is overlooked. Men
are only allowed to be happy or miserable in classes. In Gopsum Street a
man murders his mistress. The important fact is that for the man the act
is eternal, and that for the brief space he has to live, he is already
dead. He is already in a different world from ours. He has crossed the
frontier. The important fact is that something is done which can not
be undone--a possibility which none of us realize until we face it
ourselves. For the man's neighbors the important fact is what the man
killed her with? And at precisely what time? And who found the body?
For the 'enlightened public' the case is merely evidence for the Drink
question, or Unemployment, or some other category of things to be
reformed. But the mediaeval world, insisting on the eternity of
punishment, expressed something nearer the truth."

"What you say," replied Appleplex, "commands my measured adherence.
I should think, in the case of the Spaniard, and in the many other
interesting cases which have come under our attention at the door of
the police station, what we grasp in that moment of pure observation
on which we pride ourselves, is not alien to the principle of
classification, but deeper. We could, if we liked, make excellent
comment upon the nature of provincial Spaniards, or of destitution (as
misery is called by the philanthropists), or on homes for working girls.
But such is not our intention. We aim at experience in the particular
centres in which alone it is evil. We avoid classification. We do not
deny it. But when a man is classified something is lost. The majority of
mankind live on paper currency: they use terms which are merely good for
so much reality, they never see actual coinage."

"I sho