oo much. Even the stupidest--the most careless of us.
Think of Howard and Gertie and all that lot. Every second word is
'What's the good? What's it all about?' They make a great deal of
noise to cover up their unhappiness. They're terrified of loneliness
and silence. And one day it'll have to be faced."

"Oh, if you're going to take Howard as an example--" he interrupted.

"--and Rufus Cosgrave," she added.

He laughed with a boyish malice.

"Cosgrave doesn't need a god. He's got me. I'll look after him."

"You think you can? And then we ourselves. We're different, aren't
we? We've got our work. We're going to do big things. For whom?--for
what? For our fellow-creatures? But if we don't care for our
fellow-creatures? And we don't, do we? Not naturally. The
Brotherhood of Man is just dangerous nonsense. Naturally men loathe
one another in the mass. How can we pretend to love some of those
people we see every day in the wards with their terrible faces--their
terrible minds? But the idea of God does somehow translate them--it
gets underneath the ugliness--they do become in some mystic way my
brothers and my sisters."

He found it strangely difficult to answer calmly. It would have been
easier to have bludgeoned her into silence by a shouted "It's all
snivelling, wretched rot!" like an angry schoolboy. He did not know
why he was so angry. Perhaps Ricardo was right. It was something
vital. He could feel the old man's shadow at his side, his hand
plucking his sleeve, urging him on, claiming his loyalty. They were
allies fighting together against a poisonous miasma that sapped men's
brains--their intellectual integrity.

"Piling one fallacy on another isn't argument, Francey. We don't need
to like our fellow-creatures. It's a mistake to care. Emotion upsets
one's judgment. Scientists--the best men in the profession--try to
eliminate personal feeling altogether. They're out for knowledge for
its own sake. That's good enough for them."

"And the end of that--organized, scientific beastliness, like modern
war. Knowledge perverted to every sort of deviltry. Huge swollen
heads and miserable withered hearts. One of these days we'll blow
ourselves to pieces----"

They were both breathless and more than a little incoherent. They had
entered into a playful tussle, and now they were fighting one another
with set teeth.

"I don't believe you believe a word you're saying," he stammered. "Y