almost as in warning, and the heavy finger-rings chinked as he let it fall again on the arm of his chair.

"The subject of sex in connection with human beings is distasteful to me," he said.

Laurence glanced at the speaker and then back at the carven sphinx again. His eyes were a little merry—he could not help it.

"Oh! no doubt," he said; "there are times when it is distasteful to many of us, and most infernally inconvenient into the bargain. Only you see, unluckily, it is the pivot on which the whole history of the race turns."

"A most objectionable pivot! An insult to the intellect, a degradation."

"That may be so," Laurence answered. "Still the thing is there—always has been, always will be, modern science notwithstanding, unless humanity agrees to voluntary and universal suicide, a consummation which does not seem immediately probable in any case.—'Male and female created He them.' An error perhaps of judgment, but one the Creator has never shown much sign of wishing to correct as yet. The most venerable religious systems recognise this. I need not remind you that it lies at the heart of their mysteries. Christianity too—Catholic Christianity—the only form, that is, of Christianity worth considering seriously—acknowledges the profound significance of it in the worship of the divine motherhood and the perpetually renewed miracle of the Incarnation."

"You interest me," Mr. Rivers said slowly.

"I am glad of that," Laurence answered. He had warmed up unexpectedly to his subject. "I am glad of that, for I can't help seeing—"

Mr. Rivers interrupted him.

"Pardon me," he said. "I would not have you labour even temporarily under a misapprehension. It is less your exposition that interests me than yourself. I note indications of thought and feeling for which I was not wholly prepared. Taking you as a fair example of the type, I perceive that the mind of the average member of society is of an even lower order than I had supposed. I had, in my ignorance, imagined that, even in the class to which you belong, modern, scientific ideas had taken sufficient root to oust such effete superstitions as those to which you have alluded. A more or less stupid Agnosticism, an utter indifference, would not have surprised me. From such a condition development is still possible. But here I recognise traces of a return to fetich worship, to savage standards—this indeed 

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