“You’re a queer fellow, Phipps.  Don’t you ever look at women?  I believe you have the making of a saint in you.  Fight against it.  A fellow can’t live without vices.  Here you are, with lots of money, stewing in a back bedroom of a second-class hotel and getting up every morning at five o’clock because you like lying in bed late.  Is that your way of mortifying the flesh?  Got a soul, eh?  Get rid of it.  The soul!  That unhappy word has been the refuge of empty minds ever since the world began.  You’re just like a man I used to know at Newcastle.  You can’t think what an ass he was.  A sort of eugenical crank, who talked about the City Beautiful where everybody would lead regenerated lives like a flock of prize sheep.  Everything sanitary and soulful; nothing but pure men and pure women.  An addle-headed theorist, he was, till a woman got hold of him—­one of the other kind, you know—­and gave him something practical to think about.  That’s what will happen to you, Phipps.  I can see it coming.”

“I’ve been analysing myself lately.  I find I have too much romance in my composition, as it is.”

“What do you call romance?”

Denis thought awhile.  Then he said: 

“When a man invests ordinary people or objects or occurrences with an extraordinary interest.  When he reads attributes into them which they don’t possess, or exaggerates those which they do possess.  When he looks at a person and can’t help thinking that there is nobody on earth quite like her.”

“Too celestial for me, on the whole.  But I’m glad you said that last part.  Glad for your sake, I mean.  It shows that you’ve perhaps got something better than a soul, after all.”

“What is that?”

“A body.  Look here, Phipps.  I also have my romantic moments, though you wouldn’t believe it.  I can be as romantic as ever you please.  But not when I’m alone.”

“I should like to see you in that condition.  And talking Latin, no doubt?” he added with a laugh.

“I daresay you would,” replied the scientist.  “Given the circumstances under which I become romantic, you’ll find it a little difficult.  But there’s no knowing.  Funny things happen sometimes!”

Denis had picked up another stone.  He scrutinized it with close attention, and then began to turn it round and round in his hand in an absent-minded fashion.  At last he remarked: 

“We are not doing much mineralogy, are we?  What do you think of chastity, Marten?”

“Chastity be blowed.  It’s an unclean state of affairs, and dangerous to the community.  You can’t call yourself a good citizen till you have learnt to despise it from the bottom of your heart.  It’s an insult to the Creator and an abomination to man and beast.”

“Perhaps you never gave it a fair trial,” suggested Denis.