That vague sense of apprehension, of impending disaster, once more invaded him.  Suddenly it revealed itself in definite terms.  A ghastly notion flitted through his mind.

“You think it possible that Denis—?” he began.

His friend seemed to have lost all interest in that subject.  It was a way he had.

“Denis?  I really could not tell.  I’m not sufficiently in his confidence. . . .  Honour thy father and thy mother,” he proceeded, reverting to his former theme.  “What think you, Heard, of this old injunction?  Is it not altogether obsolete?  Was it not written for quite other conditions?  Honour thy father and mother.  Why?  The State educates children, feeds them, investigates and cures their complaints, washes and weighs them, reports on their teeth and stomachs, prescribes when they may begin to smoke and enter public-houses:  where does parental authority come in?  The State provides old folks with refuges and pensions:  how about the former obligations of children?  Child and parent alike now thank the community for what they once received from each other.  And the geographical elements that went to the making of a home are also dispersed.  Rich and poor roam like gipsies from one country to another, from one flat into the next; the patriarchal board is replaced by clubs and grill-rooms and fried-fish shops.  Many a man who thinks to found a home discovers that he has merely opened a tavern for his friends.  Note, too, that the family has outgrown its ecclesiastical sanction; the oil of supernaturalism which once greased the wheels has run dry; the machinery is creaking.  Industrial conditions have killed the old home.  Requiescat!  Honour thy father and mother.  Industrialism has killed that commandment.  Thou shalt not steal.  Consider this injunction, Heard, and ask yourself whether industrialism does not split its sides with laughing at it.  If we are to galvanize that old collection of laws into some semblance of life, every one f them must be re-written and brought up to date.  They are inappropriate for modern life; their interest is purely historical.  We want new values.  We are no longer nomads.  Industrialism has killed the pastoral and the agricultural points of view.  And how the modern Jews smile at our infatuation for those queer doctrines and legends which they themselves have long ago outgrown.  Apropos, what has become of Marten?”

“Left the island, I hear.”

“Quick work.  Now I wonder why?”

Everybody wondered at Marten’s precipitate departure.  Even Angelina wondered.

She just wondered.

Had he known that she wondered, he might have been tempted to prolong his stay.  But Marten was too young to be a practical psychologist.  He had lived for half a day in terror of what he called “the inevitable reaction,” unaware of the fact that certain people do not suffer from reactions and too engrossed in mineralogy to have learnt, from a study of other sciences, that Angelina was one of them.  She had passed that stage, with Homeric laughter, long before his appearance on Nepenthe.  She just wondered, nowadays.