“In most men, not at all.”
“And women?”
“Even less in women. They are always seeing things with men’s eyes, always appealing to them by their debased instincts. Clever women are even worse. They try to escape the dilemma by appealing to men’s intellects. I hate intellect. Fine women are always driving fine men into the arms of fools, or worse. The world is in a mess simply because ninety-nine people out of a hundred make a mess of their love affairs.”
“But if there is such a thing as spiritual evolution it must all come right in the end.”
“That’s no comfort to me. I shan’t see it. This world will have been snuffed out millions of years before then. It will have served its purpose, and most of us will have missed our opportunity.”
“I hope I shan’t.”
“I hope you won’t.”
They parted, and Serge made his way to St. Paul’s School, where he had promised to attend the final rehearsal of The Rose and the Ring. There he found his father sitting half-way down the room which was lit only with one gas-jet and was empty save for Jessie Clibran-Bell at the piano under the rudely-constructed stage—barrels and planks—and many rows of school desks, which were desks and forms combined, with the desks turned down and the ink-wells removed. On the walls were pictures of elephants, tigers and rhinoceroses, texts, the tonic sol-fa, and two or three oleographs representing Biblical scenes—Elisha and the Bears, Saul Listening to David’s Harping, and the Foolish Virgins. The walls themselves were distempered a bleak grey, and were rather dirty. A harmonium stood against the wall opposite the door, and above this was a glass case containing a stuffed squirrel that had lost its fur and one glass eye. Serge asked his father what it might be doing there. Francis disclaimed responsibility for the conduct of the week-day school and surmised that it was used for an object-lesson in natural history.
“Better than nothing,” he said, but he did not seem to be at all interested.
Serge plunged with a question: