He was also the first to invent, for the confusion of the clerical, the crucial case of a saint dying at the Antipodes contemporaneously with another in London. Both went skyward to Heaven, yet the two travelled in directly opposite directions. In all eternity they would never meet. Which, then, got to Heaven? Or was there no such place? ‘I am only a plain man, and I want to know.’ Preserve us our open spaces; they exist to testify to the incurable interest of humanity in the Unknown and the Misunderstood. Even ’Arry is capable of five minutes’ attention to speculative theology, if ’Arriet isn’t in a ’urry.

Peter Crowl was not sorry to have a lodger like Denzil Cantercot, who, though a man of parts and thus worth powder and shot, was so hopelessly wrong on all subjects under the sun. In only one point did Peter Crowl agree with Denzil Cantercot—he admired Denzil Cantercot secretly. When he asked him for the True—which was about twice a day on the average—he didn’t really expect to get it from him. He knew that Denzil was a poet.

‘The Beautiful,’ he went on, ‘is a thing that only appeals to men like you. The True is for all men. The majority have the first claim. Till then you poets must stand aside. The True and the Useful—that’s what we want. The Good of Society is the only test of things. Everything stands or falls by the Good of Society.’

‘The Good of Society!’ echoed Denzil, scornfully. ‘What’s the Good of Society? The Individual is before all. The mass must be sacrificed to the Great Man. Otherwise the Great Man will be sacrificed to the mass. Without great men there would be no art. Without art life would be a blank.’

‘Ah, but we should fill it up with bread and butter,’ said Peter Crowl.

‘Yes, it is bread and butter that kills the Beautiful,’ said Denzil Cantercot bitterly. ‘Many of us start by following the butterfly through the verdant meadows, but we turn aside—’

‘To get the grub,’ chuckled Peter, cobbling away.

‘Peter, if you make a jest of everything, I’ll not waste my time on you.’

Denzil’s wild eyes flashed angrily. He shook his long hair. Life was very serious to him. He never wrote comic verse intentionally.

There are three reasons why men of genius have long hair. One is, that they forget it is growing. The second is, that they like it. The third is, that it comes cheaper; they wear it long for the same reason that they wear their hats long.

Owing to this peculiarity of genius, you may get quite a reputation for lack of twopence. The economic reason did not apply to Denzil, who could always get credit with the profession on the strength of his appearance. Therefore, when street arabs vocally commanded him to get his hair cut, they were doing no service to barbers. Why does all the world watch over barbers and conspire to promote their interests? Denzil would have told you it was not to serve the barbers, but to gratify the crowd’s instinctive resentment of originality. In his palmy days Denzil had been an editor, but he no more thought of turning his scissors against himself than of swallowing his paste.