trunk.'
These two men had not forgiven each other about the Julia flirtation.
`It's an amusing idea, Charlie,' said Dukes, `that sex is just another
form of talk, where you act the words instead of saying them. I suppose it's
quite true. I suppose we might exchange as many sensations and emotions with
women as we do ideas about the weather, and so on. Sex might be a sort of
normal physical conversation between a man and a woman. You don't talk to a
woman unless you have ideas in common: that is you don't talk with any
interest. And in the same way, unless you had some emotion or sympathy in
common with a woman you wouldn't sleep with her. But if you had...'
`If you have the proper sort of emotion or sympathy with a woman, you
ought to sleep with her,' said May. `It's the only decent thing, to go to
bed with her. Just as, when you are interested talking to someone, the Only
decent thing is to have the talk out. You don't prudishly put your tongue
between your teeth and bite it. You just say out your say. And the same the
other way.'
`No,' said Hammond. `It's wrong. You, for example, May, you squander
half your force with women. You'll never really do what you should do, with
a fine mind such as yours. Too much of it goes the other way.'
`Maybe it does...and too little of you goes that way, Hammond, my boy,
married or not. You can keep the purity and integrity of your mind, but it's
going damned dry. Your pure mind is going as dry as fiddlesticks, from what
I see of it. You're simply talking it down.'
Tommy Dukes burst into a laugh.
`Go it, you two minds!' he said. `Look at me...I don't do any high and
pure mental work, nothing but jot down a few ideas. And yet I neither marry
nor run after women. I think Charlie's quite right; if he wants to run after
the women, he's quite free not to run too often. But I wouldn't prohibit him
from running. As for Hammond, he's got a property instinct, so naturally the
straight road and the narrow gate are right for him. You'll see he'll be an
English Man of Letters before he's done. A.B.C. from top to toe. Then
there's me. I'm nothing. Just a squib. And what about you, Clifford? Do you
think sex is a dynamo to help a man on to success in the world?'
Clifford rarely talked much at these times. He never held forth; his
ideas were really not vital enough for it, he was too confused and
emotional. Now he blushed and looked uncomfortable.
`Well!' he said, `being myself hors de combat, I don't see I've
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