“But, my boy, don’t let yourself be led astray by the talk of such people as Algy.  Beware of them, my boy, if you’ve a soul to save.  If you’ve a soul to save!” And he swallowed the remains of his litre.

Algy’s nose trembled a little, and his eyes blinked.  “And if you’ve a soul to LOSE,” he said, “I would warn you very earnestly against Argyle.”  Whereupon Algy shut one eye and opened the other so wide, that Aaron was almost scared.  “Quite right, my boy.  Ha!  Ha!  Never a truer thing said!  Ha-ha-ha.”  Argyle laughed his Mephistophelian tipsy laugh.  “They’ll teach you to save.  Never was such a lot of ripe old savers!  Save their old trouser-buttons!  Go to them if you want to learn to save.  Oh, yes, I advise it seriously.  You’ll lose nothing—­ not even a reputation.—­You may lose a SOUL, of course.  But that’s a detail, among such a hoard of banknotes and trouser-buttons.  Ha-ha!  What’s a soul, to them—?”

“What is it to you, is perhaps the more pertinent question,” said Algy, flapping his eyelids like some crazy owl.  “It is you who specialise in the matter of soul, and we who are in need of enlightenment—­”

“Yes, very true, you ARE!  You ARE in need of enlightenment.  A set of benighted wise virgins.  Ha-ha-ha!  That’s good, that—­benighted wise virgins!  What—­” Argyle put his red face near to Aaron’s, and made a moue, narrowing his eyes quizzically as he peered up from under his level grey eyebrows.  “Sit in the dark to save the lamp-oil—­And all no good to them.—­When the bridegroom cometh—!  Ha-ha!  Good that!  Good, my boy!—­The bridegroom—­” he giggled to himself.  “What about the bridegroom, Algy, my boy?  Eh?  What about him?  Better trim your wick, old man, if it’s not too late—­”

“We were talking of souls, not wicks, Argyle,” said Algy.

“Same thing.  Upon my soul it all amounts to the same thing.  Where’s the soul in a man that hasn’t got a bedfellow—­eh?—­answer me that!  Can’t be done you know.  Might as well ask a virgin chicken to lay you an egg.”

“Then there ought to be a good deal of it about,” said Algy.

“Of what?  Of soul?  There ought to be a good deal of soul about?—­Ah, because there’s a good deal of—­, you mean.—­Ah, I wish it were so.  I wish it were so.  But, believe me, there’s far more damned chastity in the world, than anything else.  Even in this town.—­Call it chastity, if you like.  I see nothing in it but sterility.  It takes a rat to praise long tails.  Impotence set up the praise of chastity—­believe me or not—­but that’s the bottom of it.  The virtue is made out of the necessity.—­Ha-ha-ha!—­Like them!  Like them!  Ha-ha!  Saving their souls!  Why they’d save the waste matter of their bodies if they could.  Grieves them to part with it.—­Ha! ha!—­ha!”

There was a pause.  Argyle was in his cups, which left no more to be said.  Algy, quivering and angry, looked disconcertingly round the room as if he were quite calm and collected.  The deaf Jewish Rosen was smiling down his nose and saying:  “What was that last?  I didn’t catch that last,” cupping his ear with his hand in the frantic hope that someone would answer.  No one paid any heed.