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By Root 5764 0

wide-eyed little St. Hugh. Toddling up to the women so reverently, as though they were all madonnas. But putting his dear little hand under their skirts all the same. Coming to pray, but staying to share madonnina’s bed.’ Rampion knew a good deal about Burlap’s amorous affairs and had guessed more. ‘Dear little St. Hugh! How prettily he toddles to the bedroom, and what a darling babyish way he has of snuggling down between the sheets! This sort of thing is much too gross and unspiritual for our little Hughie.’ He threw back his head and laughed.

‘Go on, go on,’ said Burlap. ‘Don’t mind me.’ And at the sight of his martyred, spiritual smile, Rampion laughed yet louder.

‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ he gasped. ‘Next time you come, I’ll have a copy of Ary Scheffer’s “St. Monica and St. Augustine” for you. That ought to make you really happy. Would you like to see some of my drawings?’ he asked in another tone. Burlap nodded. ‘They’re grotesques mostly. Caricatures. Rather ribald, I warn you. But if you will come to look at my work, you must expect what you get.’

He opened a portfolio that was lying on the table.

‘Why do you imagine I don’t like your work?’ asked Burlap. ‘After all, you’re a believer in life and so am I. We have our differences; but on most matters our point of view’s the same.’

Rampion looked up at him. ‘Oh, I’m sure it is, I know it is,’ he said, and grinned.

‘Well, if you know it’s the same,’ said Burlap, whose averted eyes had not seen the grin on the other’s face, ‘why do you imagine I’ll disapprove of your drawings?’

‘Why indeed? ‘ the other mocked.

‘Seeing that the point of view’s the same…’

‘It’s obvious that the people looking at the view from the same point must be identical.’ Rampion grinned again. ‘Q. E. D.’ He turned away again to take out one of the drawings. ‘This is what I call “Fossils of the Past and Fossils of the Future.”’ He handed Burlap the drawing. It was in ink touched with coloured washes, extraordinarily brilliant and lively. Curving in a magnificently sweeping S, a grotesque procession of monsters marched diagonally down and across the paper. Dinosaurs, pterodactyls, titanotheriums, diplodocuses, ichthyosauruses walked, swam or flew at the tail of the procession; the van was composed of human monsters, huge-headed creatures, without limbs or bodies, creeping slug-like on vaguely slimy extensions of chin and neck. The faces were mostly those of eminent contemporaries. Among the crowd Burlap recognized J. J. Thomson and Lord Edward Tantamount, Bernard Shaw, attended by eunuchs and spinsters, and Sir Oliver Lodge, attended by a sheeted and turnipheaded ghost and a walking cathode tube, Sir, Alfred Mond and the head of John D. Rockefeller carried on a charger by a Baptist clergyman, Dr. Frank Crane and Mrs. Eddy wearing haloes, and many others.

‘The lizards died of having too much body and too little head,’ said Rampion in explanation.’so at least the scientists are never tired of telling us. Physical size is a handicap after a certain point. But what about mental size? These fools seem to forget that they’re just as top-heavy and clumsy and disproportioned as any diplodocus. Sacrificing physical life and affective life to mental life. What do they imagine’s going to happen?’

Burlap nodded his agreement. ‘That’s what I’ve always asked. Man can’t live without a heart.’

‘Not to mention bowels and skin and bones and flesh,’ said Rampion. ‘They’re just marching towards extinction. And a damned good thing too. Only the trouble is that they’re marching the rest of the world along with them. Blast their eyes! I must say, I resent being condemned to extinction because these imbeciles of scientists and moralists and spiritualists and technicians and literary and political uplifters and all the rest of them haven’t the sense to see that man must live as a man, not as a monster of conscious braininess and soulfulness. Grr! I’d like to kill the lot of them.’ He put the drawing back into the portfolio and extracted another. ‘Here are two Outlines of History, the one on the left according to H. G.