John, again like all other prigs, was patient with those not so gifted as himself.

"I daresay you will explain to me what it all amounts to," he said. "All I am certain of is that Berts wanted to read Stevenson's letters and so got into a train, where he would be undisturbed. Wouldn't it have answered the same purpose if he had taken a room at the Paddington hotel?"

Nadine turned to Berts.

"Oh, Berts, that would have been rather lovely," she said.

"Not at all," said he. "I wanted the sense of travel."

John got up.

"Then I should have recommended the Underground," he said. "You could have gone round and round until you had finished. It would have been much cheaper."

Nadine waved impotent arms of despair.

"Now you have spoiled it," she said. "There was a possibility in the Paddington hotel, which sounds so remote. But the Underground! You might as well[Pg 64] say, why do I bathe, I who cannot swim? I can get clean in a bath, though I only get dirty in the sea, and if I want the salt I can put Tiddle-de-wink salt or whatever the name is in my bath—"

[Pg 64]

"Tidman," said John.

"I am sure you are right, though who cares? I am knocked down by cold waves, I am cut by stones on my soles. I am pinched by crabs and homards, at least I think I am; the wind gnaws at my bones, and my hair is as salt as almonds. Between my toes is sand, and bits of seaweed make me a plaster, and my stockings fall into rock-pools, but do I go with rapture to have a bath in the bathroom? I hate washing. There is nothing so sordid as to wash my face, except to brush my teeth. But to bathe in the sea makes me think: it gives me romance. Poor John, you never get romance. You amass information, and make a Blue Book. But we all, we make blue mountains, which we never reach. If we reached them they would probably turn out to be green. As it is, they are always blue, because they are beyond. It is suggestion that we seek, not attainment. To attain is dull, to aspire is the sugar and salt of life. Don't you see? To realize an ideal is to lose the ideal. It is like a man growing rich: he never sees his sovereigns: when he has gained them he flings them forth again into something further. If he left them in a box, the real sovereigns, under his bed, what chance would there be for him to grow rich? But out they go, he never uses them, except that he makes them breed. 

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