She said:

"People like you and Queen don't want to bother about age. Neither of you has any age. And I'm not imploring you to have her. I'm only telling you that she's there for you if you want her. But doesn't she attract you? Isn't she positively irresistible?" She added with poignancy: "I know if I were a man I should find her irresistible."

"Just so."

A look of sacrifice came into Concepcion's eyes as she finished:

"I'd do anything, anything, to make Queen happy."

"Yes, you would," retorted G.J. icily, carried away by a ruthless and inexorable impulse. "You'd do anything to make her happy even for three months. Yes, to make her happy for three weeks you'd be ready to ruin my whole life. I know you and Queen." And the mild image of Christine formed in his mind, soothingly, infinitely desirable. What balm, after the nerve-racking contact of these incalculable creatures!

Concepcion retired with a gesture of the arm and sat down by the fire.

"You're terrible, G.J.," she said wistfully. "Queen wouldn't be thrown away on you, but you'd be thrown away on her. I admit it. I didn't think you had it in you. I never saw a man develop as you have. Marriage isn't for you. You ought to roam in the primeval forest, and take and kill."

"Not a bit," said G.J., appeased once more. "Not a bit.... But the new relations of the sexes aren't in my line."

"New? My poor boy, are you so ingenuous after all? There's nothing very new in the relations of the sexes that I know of. They're much what they were in the Garden of Eden."

"What do you know of the Garden of Eden?"

"I get my information from Milton," she replied cheerfully, as though much relieved.

"Have you read Paradise Lost, then, Con?"

"I read it all through in my lodgings. And it's really rather good. In fact, the remarks of Raphael to Adam in the eighth book—I think it is—are still just about the last word on the relations of the sexes:

"Oft-times nothing profits more
Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right
Well-managed; of that skill the more thou know'st,
The more she will acknowledge thee her head
And to realities yield all her shows."

G.J., marvelling, exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm:

"By Jove! You're an astounding woman, Con. You do me good!"

There was a fresh noise beyond the door, and the door opened and Robin rushed in, blanched and hysterical, and with her seemed to rush in terror.

"Oh! Madame!" she cried. "As there was no more firing I went on to the roof, and her ladyship—" She covered her face and sobbed.

G.J. jumped up.

"Go and see," said Concepcion in a blank voice, not moving. "I can't.... It's the message straight from Potsdam that's arrived."

Chapter 35 - Queen Dead

*

G.J. emerged from the crowded and malodorous Coroner's Court with a deep sense of the rigour and the thoroughness of British justice, and especially of its stolidity.