"Exactly!" said Henry. "That's my view!"
"Well, all I can say," said Ninian, "is that it won't do. This may be a tom-fool sort of a world, but it gets along in its tom-fool way a lot better than it will in your neat arrangement of things...."
"Besides," Roger said, taking up the argument from Ninian, "there is a common measure in life. Oh, I know quite well that there are differences between man and man, but there are resemblances, too, and what we've got to do ... the Improved Tories, I mean ... is to discover which is the more important, the resemblances of men or the differences of men. As a lawyer, of course, I only know what's in my brief, but as a man, I'm interested!"
"The question is," said Gilbert, "are women a damned nuisance that ought to be put down, or are they not? I say they are, but I like 'em all the same, and that only shows what a blasted hole I'm in. I like kissing them ... it's no good pretending that I don't...."
"Not a bit," said Ninian.
"And I kiss 'em whenever I get a chance," Gilbert continued, "but all the same I'd like to be a whopping big icicle so as to be able to ignore 'em ... like Roger!"
Ninian got up, resolved on going to bed. "Come on," he said, stretching himself. "Our jaw about women doesn't appear to have solved anything!"
"It never will," Roger answered, rising too. "We shall still be jawing about them this day twelvemonth...."
"D.V.," said Gilbert.
"But we won't get any forrarder!"