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make their own grand little act of faith. They’ll offer one
another up.’
’You mean kill one another?’
’I do, duckie! If we go on at our present rate then in a hun-
dred years’ time there won’t be ten thousand people in this
island: there may not be ten. They’ll have lovingly wiped
each other out. The thunder was rolling further away.
’How nice!’ she said.
’Quite nice! To contemplate the extermination of the hu-
man species and the long pause that follows before some
other species crops up, it calms you more than anything
else. And if we go on in this way, with everybody, intellec-
tuals, artists, government, industrialists and workers all
frantically killing off the last human feeling, the last bit of
their intuition, the last healthy instinct; if it goes on in al-
gebraical progression, as it is going on: then ta-tah! to the
human species! Goodbye! darling! the serpent swallows
itself and leaves a void, considerably messed up, but not
hopeless. Very nice! When savage wild dogs bark in Wragby,
and savage wild pit-ponies stamp on Tevershall pit-bank!
TE DEUM LAUDAMUS!’
Connie laughed, but not very happily.
’Then you ought to be pleased that they are all bolshe-
vists,’ she said. ‘You ought to be pleased that they hurry on
towards the end.’
’So I am. I don’t stop ‘em. Because I couldn’t if I would.’
’Then why are you so bitter?’
’I’m not! If my cock gives its last crow, I don’t mind.’
’But if you have a child?’ she said.

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