“I see what you are driving at.  You wish me to think that this fictitious value, as you would call it—­this halo of sanctity—­with which we now invest a human life, may be blown away at any moment.  Possibly you are right.  Perhaps we English do exaggerate its importance.  They don’t take much account of life in my part of Africa.”

“And then, I disagree with what you say about the difficulty of understanding the laws of morality.  Any child can grasp the morality of its period.  Why should I pretend to be interested in what a child can grasp?  If is a positive strain to keep one’s mind at that low level.  Why should I impose this strain upon myself?  When a group-up man shows an unfeigned interest in such questions I regard him as a case of arrested development.  All morality is a generalization, and all generalizations are tedious.  Why should I plague myself with what is tedious?  Altogether the question that confronts me is not whether morality is worth talking about, but whether it’s worth laughing at.  Sometimes I think it is.  It reminds me of those old pantomime jokes that make one quite sad, at first, with their heart-breaking vulgarity; those jokes, you know, that have to be well rubbed in before we begin to see how really funny they are.  And, by Jove, they do rub this one in, don’t they?  You must talk to Don Francesco about these things.  You will find him sound, though he does not push his conclusions as far as I do—­not in public, at least.  Or to Count Caloveglia.  He is a remarkable Latin, that old man.  Why don’t you drive up one day and have a look at his Locri Faun?  Street, the South Kensington man, thinks very highly of it.”

“I would like to listen to you just now.  I am listening, and thinking.  Please go on.  I’ll preach you my sermon some other day.”

“Will you?  I wonder!  I don’t believe, Heard, that you will preach another sermon in your life.  I don’t think you will ever go back to Africa, or to any other episcopal work.  I think you have reached a turning point.”

The bishop was thoughtful for a moment.  Those words went home.  Then he said lightly: 

“You are in better vein than you were a short while ago.”

“That story of the botanist has revived me.  He tells it rather well, doesn’t he?  It is good to inhabit a world where such things can still happen.  I feel as if life were worth living.  I feel as if I could discuss anything.  What were you going to say about the American millionaire?”

“Ah yes,” replied Mr. Heard.  “I wondered, supposing these reports about the ladies are true, how far you and I, for example, should condone his vices.”

“Vices.  My dear bishop!  Under a sky like this.  Have a good look at it; do.”