Science to bear--what am I? A
cloudy multitude of atoms, an infinite interplay of little cells. Is
this hand that I hold out me? This head? Is the surface of my skin any
more than a rude average boundary? You say it is my mind that is me?
But consider the war of motives. Suppose I have an impulse that I
resist--it is _I_ resist it--the impulse is outside me, eh? But
suppose that impulse carries me and I do the thing--that impulse is
part of me, is it not? Ah! My brain reels at these mysteries! Lord!
what flimsy fluctuating things we are--first this, then that, a
thought, an impulse, a deed and a forgetting, and all the time madly
cocksure we are ourselves. And as for you--you who have hardly learned
to think for more than five or six short years, there you sit,
assured, coherent, there you sit in all your inherited original
sin--Hallucinatory Windlestraw!--judging and condemning. _You_ know
Right from Wrong! My boy, so did Adam and Eve ... _so soon as they'd
had dealings with the father of lies_!"

* * * * *

At the end of the evening whisky and hot water were produced, and
Chaffery, now in a mood of great urbanity, said he had rarely enjoyed
anyone's conversation so much as Lewisham's, and insisted upon
everyone having whisky. Mrs. Chaffery and Ethel added sugar and
lemon. Lewisham felt an instantaneous mild surprise at the sight of
Ethel drinking grog.

At the door Mrs. Chaffery kissed Lewisham an effusive good-bye, and
told Ethel she really believed it was all for the best.

On the way home Lewisham was thoughtful and preoccupied. The problem
of Chaffery assumed enormous proportions. At times indeed even that
good man's own philosophical sketch of himself as a practical exponent
of mental sincerity touched with humour and the artistic spirit,
seemed plausible. Lagune was an undeniable ass, and conceivably
psychic research was an incentive to trickery. Then he remembered the
matter in his relation to Ethel....

"Your stepfather is a little hard to follow," he said at last, sitting
on the bed and taking off one boot. "He's dodgy--he's so confoundedly
dodgy. One doesn't know where to take hold of him. He's got such a
break he's clean bowled me again and again."

He thought for a space, and then removed his boot and sat with it on
his knee. "Of course!... all that he said was wrong--quite
wrong. Right is right and cheating is cheating, whatever you say about
it."

"That's what I