“Perhaps I’m not quite such a damned fool as all that.  A man needn’t handle everything dirty in order to be doubly sure about it.  If you tell me that a dead donkey smells bad, I’m quite prepared to believe you without poking my nose into it.  Chastity is a dead donkey.  No beating will bring it to life again.  Who killed it?  The experience of every sane man and woman on earth.  It’s decayed; it ought to be buried.  You ask me to give it a trial.  Perhaps I will, when I’m in the same mellow condition myself.  Everything in its proper season.  Don’t let us reverse the natural order of things.  When we cease to practise, then is the time to preach.  A fellow of your size!  And with your good looks, too.  Who knows how many golden opportunities you’ve missed.  Try to make up for lost time, Phipps.  Get rid of conventional notions, if you value your health.”

“I will, when I find them wrong.  What do you think of women—­generally speaking, I mean?”

Marten replied, without a moment’s hesitation: 

“Thank God I’m a Jew.  You must take that into consideration.  I think the Mormons have made a good shot at solving the woman question, if the question exists at all.  Mormonism is a protest against monogamy.  And please observe that it’s a protest not on the part of man alone.  It’s a protest on the part of woman.  Never forget that.  In fact, I don’t believe any woman would ever bind herself to one fool of a man if she had her own way.  She wouldn’t marry at all.  She needn’t, nowadays.  She won’t, very soon.  A man who marries—­well, there may be some excuse for him, though a love-match is generally a failure and a money-match always a mistake.  The heroes, the saints and sages—­they are those who face the world alone.  A married man is half a man.”

“Ahem!”

Marten was silent.

“I did not ask you to stop,” said Denis.  “You’ve got it very pat!”

“Plain sailing, my boy.  It’s the social reformers and novelists who create these artificial conundrums; they want to sell their rotten literature; they want to make us forget that the only interesting and important part of the business is what nobody talks or writes about.  What does it all amount to?  Man creates intellectually and physically.  He classifies minerals or blasts out a tunnel.  Woman creates physiologically; she supplies the essential, the raw material; her noblest product is a child.  I get on splendidly with women, because we both realize the stupidity of the average sex-twaddle.  We have no illusions about each other.  We know exactly what we are after.  We know exactly how to attain it.  I tell you what, Phipps, Female Emancipation is going to do away with a lot of cant and idealism.  Knock the silly male on the head.  There’ll be an end of your chastity-worship, once women are fairly started on the game.  They won’t put up with it.”

“Disgusting,” said Denis.  “Go on.”

“I’m done.  What, sanidin again?”