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things such as physical comfort: eating and sleeping and procreation.”
    What more could you want? thought Jones. Here was a swell place. A man could very well spend all his time eating and sleeping and procreating, Jones believed. He rather wished the rector (or anyone who could imagine a world consisting solely of food and sleep and women) had had the creating of things and that he, Jones, could be forever thirty-one years of age. The rector, though, seemed to hold different opinions.
    â€œWhat would they do to pass the time?” asked Jones for the sake of argument, wondering what the others would do to pass the time, what with eating and sleeping and fornication taken from them.
    â€œHalf of them would manufacture objects and another portion would coin gold and silver with which to purchase these objects. Of course, there would be storage places for the coins and objects, thus providing employment for some of the people. Others naturally would have to till the soil.”
    â€œBut how would you finally dispose of the coins and objects? After a while you would have a single vast museum and a bank, both filled with useless and unnecessary things, And that is already the curse of our civilization—Things, Possessions, to which we are slaves, which require us to either labour honestly at least eight hours a day or do something illegal so as to keep them painted or dressed in the latest mode or filled with whisky or gasoline.”
    â€œQuite true. And this would remind us too sorely of the world as it is. Needless to say, I have provided for both of these contingencies. The coins might be reduced again to bullion and coined over, and”—the reverend man looked at Jones in ecstasy—“the housewives could use the objects for fuel with which to cook food.”
    Old fool, thought Jones, saying: “Marvellous, magnificent! You are a man after my own heart, Doctor.”
    The rector regarded Jones kindly. “Ah, boy, there is nothing after youth’s own heart: youth has no heart.”
    â€œBut, Doctor. This borders upon lese-majesty. I thought we had declared a truce regarding each other’s cloth.”
    Shadows moved as the sun moved, a branch dappled the rector’s brow: a laurelled Jove.
    â€œWhat is your cloth?”
    â€œWhy——” began Jones.
    â€œIt is the diaper still, dear boy. But forgive me,” he added quickly on seeing Jones’s face. His arm was heavy and solid as an oak branch across Jones’s shoulder. “Tell me, what do you consider the most admirable of virtues?”
    Jones was placated. “Sincere arrogance,” he returned promptly. The rector’s great laugh boomed like bells in the. sunlight, sent the sparrows like gusty leaves whirling.
    â€œShall we be friends once more, then? Come, I will make a concession: I will show you my flowers. You are young enough to appreciate them without feeling called upon to comment.”
    The garden was worth seeing. An avenue of roses bordered a gravelled path which passed from sunlight beneath two overarching oaks. Beyond the oaks, against a wall of poplars in a restless formal row were columns of a Greek temple, yet the poplars themselves in slim, vague green were poised and vain as girls in a frieze. Against a privet hedge would soon be lilies like nuns in a cloister and blue hyacinths swung soundless bells, dreaming of Lesbos. Upon a lattice wall wistaria would soon burn in slow inverted lilac flame, and following it they came lastly upon a single rose bush. The branches were huge and knotted with age, heavy and dark as a bronze pedestal, crowned with pale impermanent gold. The divine’s hands lingered upon it with soft passion.
    â€œNow, this,” he said, “is my son and my daughter, the wife of my bosom and the bread of my belly: it is my right hand and my left hand. Many is the night I have stood beside it here after having moved the wrappings too soon, burning