If I put down what really happened when men were spoony, why should that be crude? Well, at any rate I had had lots of practice in love—in being loved—since I had perpetrated that fake autobiography.

To escape Mrs. Crasterton’s sententiousness as to how much I should have learned from a man like that, and to begin on the article, I betook myself to my own room. Gaddy was sitting in his study with the door open as I passed, having just come home by cab. He often called me in to ask what measure I had taken of things. I threw away caution with him as I felt I could trust him. His fatness made him safe and kind, and he was always on my side.

“What kind of an old frogabollow is that?” I demanded.

“He’s one of the geni-asses from HOME. They send us a good supply. They fill the vacancies left by our crude youngsters who go to put punch into the effete old world.”

Gad emphasised the word crude with a wink. “The pressure of competition or tippling drives them out to us. We haven’t the population to make an arena for our men of art or letters or other kinds of ability, so they go to the central market. This old chap is right in some things, but in others he’s a decadent blitherer, and when our young fools try to reflect his point of view it quite breaks ’em up.”

I felt like hugging Gaddy, but refrained because he did not enjoy interruption in the middle of a discourse.

“I think, meself, there’s something in imagining the greatness of an undeveloped country, but old Wilting measures greatness by the style of clubs and art galleries, and dismisses the menace of the slums as being inevitable for the lower orders.”

“He says Australia has no background.”

“And England has so much that she is a museum of what has been, while Australia is an experimental laboratory of what will be. I prefer foreground to background.”

“He says the lovemaking in my book is crude. Miss Elderberry and Mrs. Swift said that too.”

“It’s a fact, me dear. There is the same difference between your idea of love-making and the experience of those old warhorses as there is between an English breakfast and a French dinner. To gain the approval of those destriers you would need to have love made to you by none except those who should not approach you—other women’s husbands for instance.”

“That would be disgusting. I wouldn’t listen.”

Gaddy laughed till he cried, but I could not see why. “You should be able to incite amour and extract the erotic excitement from it without running amok of the conventions or the tongues of those experienced in detecting smart love. You’ll find plenty of fellows so skilled in love-making that they can put a double end on it, so that if you know how to give experienced encouragement they are prepared to go the whole length; but if you are found to be of honest virtue they can take the down off the situation and leave you to feel that you had been the one in the wrong. Thank God you are crude, as crude as your lily and roses complexion that can bear the sun’s crude morning glare, and crude may you remain as long as possible, is my prayer.”