corners,—four mustard pots. I dare say he'd be glad of a mustard plaster now to cool him, poor devil, where he is. But anyhow,—here goes!"
§5
It came to me in the small hours that the real moral touchstone for this great doubting of mind was Marion. I lay composing statements of my problem and imagined myself delivering them to her—and she, goddess-like and beautiful, giving her fine, simply-worded judgment.
"You see, it's just to give one's self over to the Capitalistic System," I imagined myself saying in good socialist jargon; "it's surrendering all one's beliefs. We may succeed, we may grow rich, but where would the satisfaction be?"
Then she would say, "No! That wouldn't be right."
"But the alternative is to wait!"
Then suddenly she would become a goddess. She would turn upon me frankly and nobly, with shining eyes, with arms held out. "No," she would say, "we love one another. Nothing ignoble shall ever touch us. We love one another. Why wait to tell each other that, dear? What does it matter that we are poor and may keep poor?" . . .
But indeed the conversation didn't go at all in that direction. At the sight of her my nocturnal eloquence became preposterous and all the moral values altered altogether. I had waited for her outside the door of the Persian-robe establishment in Kensington High Street and walked home with her thence. I remember how she emerged into the warm evening light and that
