“I don’t know,” said Peter dreamily. “All Men are Grass, The Way of all Flesh—­no, neither of those is good, and besides, one at least is taken.  I know,” he added suddenly, “I would call it Exchange, that’s all.  My word, Julie, I believe I could do it.”  He straightened himself, and walked across the room and back again, once or twice.  “I believe I could:  I feel it tingling in me; but it’s all formless, if you understand; I’ve no plot.  It’s just what I feel as I sit there in a theatre, as we did just now.”

Julie leaned forward and took the cigarette she had just refused.  She lit it herself with a half-burnt match, and Peter stood and watched her, but hardly saw what she was doing.  She was as conscious of his preoccupation as if it were something physical about him.

“Explain, my dear,” she said, leaning back and staring into the fire.

“I don’t know that I can,” he replied, and she felt as if he did not speak to her.  “It’s the bigness of it all, the beauty, the triumphant success.  It’s drawn that great house full, lured them in, the thousands of them, and it does so night after night.  Tired people go there to be refreshed, and sad people to be made gay, and people sick of life to laugh and forget it.  It’s the world’s big anodyne.  It offers a great exchange.  And all for a few shillings, Julie, and for a few hours.  The sensation lingers, but one has to go again and again.  It tricks one into thinking, almost, that it’s the real thing, that one can dance like mayflies in the sun.  Only, Julie, there comes an hour when down sinks the sun, and what of the mayflies then?”

Julie shifted her head ever so little.  “Go on,” she said, looking up intently at him.

He did not notice her, but her words roused him.  He began to pace up and down again, and her eyes followed him.  “Why,” he said excitedly, “don’t you see that it’s a fraudulent exchange?  It’s a fraudulent exchange that it offers, and it itself is an exchange as fraudulent as that which our modern world is making.  No, not our modern world only.  We talk so big of our modernity, when it’s all less than the dust—­this year’s leaves, no better than last year’s, and fallen to-morrow.  Rome offered the same exchange, and even a better one, I think—­the blood and lust and conflict of the amphitheatre.  But they’re both exchanges, offered instead of the great thing, the only great thing.”

“Which is, Peter?”

“God, of course—­Almighty God; Jesus, if you will, but I’m not in a mood for the tenderness of that.  It’s God Himself Who offers tired and sad people, and people sick of life, no anodyne, no mere rest, but stir and fight and the thrill of things nobly done—­nobly tried, Julie, even if nobly failed.  Can’t you see it?  And you and I to-night have been looking at what the world offers—­in exchange.”

He ceased and dropped into a chair the other side of the fire.  A silence fell on them.  Then Julie gave a little shiver.  “Peter, dear,” she said tenderly, “I’m a little tired and cold.”