Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER TWO LADY BARBARA NEAVE "constantine: From seventeen to thirty-four . . . the years which a man should consecrate to the acquiring of political virtue . . . wherever he turns he is distracted, provoked, tantalised by the bare-faced presence of woman. How's he to keep a clear brain for the larger issues of life? . . . Women haven't morals or intellect in our sense of the words. They have other incompatible qualities quite as important, no doubt. But shut them away from public life and public exhibition. It's degrading to compete with them . . . it's as degrading to compete for them. . . ." Granville Barker: "the Madras House." The latest, costliest and most ingenious mechanical device in Eric's bedroom was an electric dial and switchboard communicating with the kitchen and so constructed that, by moving a clock-hand, the corresponding dial abandoned the non-committal elusiveness of "Please call me at " for "Please call me at 8.00 (or 9.00 or 9.30)." There was something calculatedly dissolute about the invention (which cost £17.10 and had struck work four times in three weeks). After a long night of work or frolic, the sybarite moved the hand on for twelve hours—his last conscious act before collapsing into bed; if, again, he had retired early or were so much debauched that he could not sleep, he wearily set the hand for "Please call me now." Eric looked with smarting eyes first at the luminous clock, then at the dial. Half-past five, coupled with "Please call me at eight." He undressed ruminatively, reheated his hot- water can at the gas-ring, methodically folded his clothes, smoothed his trousers away in their press, selected a suitfor the following day, washed face and hands, brushed teeth and hoisted himself into bed. The dial must stand as he had lef...