“But that is sheer madness. I mean . . .”

“Why the blazes couldn’t you tell him you’d have your wife here?”

“Isn’t that my own business?”

“Don’t you want to have her? You’re not very polite to little wifie, Studdock. And they tell me she’s a damned pretty girl.”

At that moment the form of Wither, slowly sauntering in their direction, became apparent to both and the conversation ended.

At dinner he sat next to Filostrato. There were no other members of the inner circle within earshot. The Italian was in good spirits and talkative. He had just given orders for the cutting down of some fine beech trees in the grounds.

“Why have you done that, Professor?” said a Mr. Winter who sat opposite. “I shouldn’t have thought they did much harm at that distance from the house. I’m rather fond of trees myself.”

“Oh yes, yes,” replied Filostrato. “The pretty trees , the garden trees. But not the savages. I put the rose in my garden, but not the briar. The forest tree is a weed. But I tell you I have seen the civilised tree in Persia. It was a French attache who had it, because he was in a place where trees do not grow. It was made of metal. A poor, crude thing. But how if it were perfected? Light, made of aluminium. So natural, it would even deceive.”

“It would hardly be the same as a real tree,” said Winter.

“But consider the advantages! You get tired of him in one place: two workmen carry him somewhere else: wherever you please. It never dies. No leaves to fall, no twigs, no birds building nests, no muck and mess.”

“I suppose one or two, as curiosities, might be rather amusing.”

“Why one or two? At present, I allow, we must have forest for the atmosphere. Presently we find a chemical substitute. And then, why any natural trees? I foresee nothing but the art tree all over the earth. In fact, we clean the planet.”

“Do you mean,” put in a man called Gould, “that we are to have no vegetation at all?”

“Exactly. You shave your face: even, in the English fashion, you shave him every day. One day we shave the planet.”

“I wonder what the birds will make of it?”

“I would not have any birds either. On the art tree I would have the art birds all singing when you press a switch inside the house. When you are tired of the singing you switch them off. Consider again the improvement. No feathers dropped about, no nests, no eggs, no dirt.”

“It sounds,” said Mark, “like abolishing pretty well all organic life.”

“And why not? It is simple hygiene. Listen, my friends. If you pick up some rotten thing and find this organic life crawling over it, do you not say, ‘Oh, the horrid thing. It is alive,’ and then drop it?”

“Go on,” said Winter.

“And you, especially you English, are you not hostile to any organic life except your own on your own body? Rather than permit it you have invented the daily bath.”

“That’s true.”

“And what do you call dirty dirt? Is it not precisely the organic? Minerals are clean dirt. But the real filth is what comes from organisms-sweat, spittles, excretions. Is not your whole idea of purity one huge example? The impure and the organic are interchangeable conceptions.”

“What are you driving at, Professor?” said Gould.

“After all we are organisms ourselves.”

“I grant it. That is the point. In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we want no more of it. We do not want the world any longer furred over with organic life, like what you call the blue mould-all sprouting and budding and breeding and decaying. We must get rid of it. By little and little, of course; slowly we learn how. Learn to make our brains live with less and less body: learn to build our bodies directly with chemicals, no longer have to stuff them full of dead brutes and weeds. Learn how to reproduce ourselves without copulation.”

“I don’t think that would be much fun,” said Winter.

“My friend, you have already separated the Fun, as you call it, from the fertility. The Fun itself begins to pass away. Bah! I know that is not what you think. But look at your English women. Six out of ten are frigid are they not? You see? Nature herself begins to throw away the anachronism. When she has quite thrown it away, then real civilisation becomes possible. You would understand if you were peasants. Who would try to work with stallions and bulls? No, no; we want geldings and oxen. There will never be peace and order and discipline so long as there is sex. When man has thrown it away, then he will become finally governable.”

This brought them to the end of dinner, and as they rose from the table Filostrato whispered in Mark’s ear “I would not advise the Library for you to-night. You understand? You are not in favour. Come and have a little conversation with me in my room.”

Mark rose and followed him, glad and surprised that in this new crisis with the D.D. Filostrato was apparently still his friend. They went up to the Italian’s sitting-room on the first floor. There Mark sat down before the fire, but his host continued to walk up and down the room.

“I am very sorry, my young friend,” said Filostrato, “to hear of this new trouble between you and the Deputy Director. It must be stopped, you understand? If he invite you to bring your wife here why do you not bring her?”

“Well, really,” said Mark, “I never knew he attached so much importance to it. I thought he was merely being polite.” His objection to having Jane at Belbury had been if not removed, at least temporarily deadened by the wine he had drunk at dinner and by the sharp pang he had felt at the threat of expulsion from the library circle.

“It is of no importance in itself,” said Filostrato.

“But I have reason to believe it came not from Wither but from the Head himself.”

“The Head? You mean Jules?” said Mark in some surprise. “I thought he was a mere figure head. And why should he care whether I bring my wife here or not?”

“You were mistaken,” said Filostrato. “Our Head is no figure head.” There was something odd about his manner, Mark thought. For some time neither man spoke.

“It is all true,” said Filostrato at last, “what I said at dinner.”

“But about Jules,” said Mark. “What business is it of his?”

“Jules?” said Filostrato, “why do you speak of him? I say it was all true. The world I look forward to is the world of perfect purity. The clean mind and the clean minerals. What are the things that most offend the dignity of man? Birth and breeding and death. How if we are about to discover that Mind can live without any of the three?”

Mark stared. Filostrato’s conversation appeared as disjointed and his manner so unusual that he began to wonder if he were quite sane or quite sober.

“As for your wife,” resumed Filostrato, “I attach no importance to it. What have I to do with men’s wives? The whole subject disgusts me. But if they make a point of it . . . Look, my friend, the real question is whether you mean to be truly at one with us or no.”

“I don’t quite follow,” said Mark.

“Do you want to be a mere hireling? But you have already come too far in for that. You are at the turningpoint of your career, Mr. Studdock. If you try to go back you will be as unfortunate as the fool Hingest. If you come really in-the world . . . bah, what do I say? . . . the universe is at your feet.”

“But of course I want to come in,” said Mark. A certain excitement was stealing over him.

“The Head thinks that you cannot be really one of us if you will not bring your wife here. He will have all of you, and all that is yours-or else nothing. You must bring the woman in too. She also must be one of us.”

This remark was like a shock of cold water in Mark’s face. And yet . . . and yet . . . in that room and at that moment, fixed with the little, bright eyes of the Professor, he could hardly make the thought of Jane quite real to himself.