“No women?”
“Only the physical.”
“Ah! you mean we lack the refining influence!” The Captain smiled.
“I shouldn’t have put it that way, sir. I mean that if men are left too long with men they are liable to become beasts.” An illustration of his point flashed across Hartington’s mind. “You know what it is, sir, after dinner in England, when the ladies are gone. It begins in talk almost at once. And, left together long enough, men become cruel.”
“That’s true.” The Captain ran his tongue across his lips. “But you spoke of books and pictures.”
“And plays and music, sir, and walks in the country, and games, and riding—but chiefly books and pictures, plays and music. They are the best products of civilization.”
“And we live among the worst—guns, torpedoes? Is that the idea? But you can have books and pictures in the Service?”
“You can have a few of your own, sir; but that’s not the same thing as meeting them at every turn, in every house. We are outside the atmosphere of——” Hartington broke off suddenly. This was a senior naval officer to whom he was speaking. Almost he had forgotten that.
“Go on,” the Captain said. “The atmosphere of——”?
“Outside the atmosphere of beauty,” Hartington said reluctantly. One does not wisely speak of the atmosphere of beauty to post-captains.