understand a minute or so ago that
you went in for the old-fashioned kind of soul, the kind we were both
brought up to. I'm not at all sure that I wouldn't rather have Mrs.
Ascher's new kind, even if it----"

"Don't start talking about begonias again," said Gorman.

"I wasn't going to. I was only going to say that even plays in which
nothing happens and grimy women say indecent things--that's art you
know--seem to me better than the sort of things your soul fattens on."

"I don't see any good talking about souls," said Gorman. "This is a
matter of business. The other people will crush us if they can. If they
can't, and they won't be able to if Ascher backs us, they'll have to
pay us. There's nothing wrong about that, is there? Look at it this way.
We've got something to sell----"

"Cash registers," I said. "But you don't propose to sell them."

"Not cash registers, but the right to make a certain kind of cash
registers. That's what we're going to sell. We could sell it to the
public, form a company to use the rights. It suits us better for various
reasons to sell it to these people. It suits them to buy. They needn't
unless they like. But they will like. Now if we want to sell and they
want to buy and we agree on the price where does anybody's soul come
in?"

"There is evidently," I said, "a third kind of soul. The original,
religious kind, the artistic kind, and what we may call the business
soul. You have a mixture of all three in you, Gorman."

"I wish you'd stop worrying about my soul and tell me this. Are you
going to help to rope in Ascher or not? He'll come if you use your
influence with him."

"My dear fellow," I said. "Of course I'm going to help. Haven't you
offered me a share of the loot?"

"I thought you would," said Gorman triumphantly. "But what about your
own soul?"

"I haven't got one," I said.

I used to have a sort of instinct called honour which served men of my
class instead of a soul. But Gorman and Gorman's father before him and
their political associates have succeeded in abolishing gentlemen in
Ireland. There is no longer the class of gentry in that country and
the few surviving individuals have learned that honour is a silly
superstition. I am now a disinterested spectator of a game which my
ancestors played and lost. The virtue desirable in a spectator is not
honour but curiosity. I wanted very much to see how Ascher would take
Gorman's proposal and how the whole thing would work