“Does every one?”
“Yes. Consciously or not. That’s where you and I are at issue, Peter.”
“Oh, I don’t see the ideas at work!” cried Peter. “Except as a sort of flourish of the mind. But look at the everyday life. Wherever we have been—in London, Paris, Italy, Berlin, here, we see every man who can afford it making for the restaurants and going where there are women to be got. Hunger, indulgence, and sex, sex, sex, sex.” His voice was suddenly bitter. He turned his face to Oswald for a moment. “We’re too little. These blind impulses——I suppose there’s a sort of impulse to Beauty in it. Some day perhaps these forces will do something—drive man up the scale of being. But as far as we’ve got——!”
He stared at Moscow again.
He seemed to have done.
“You think we’re oversexed?” said Oswald after a pause.
The youngster glanced at his guardian.
“I’m not blind,” he fenced.
Then he laughed with a refreshing cheerfulness. “It’s youthful pessimism, Nobby. My mind runs like this because it’s the fashion. We get so dosed with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche—usually at second hand. We all try to talk like this. Don’t mind me.”
Oswald smiled back.