'Two minutes,' said Hirst, raising his finger.
He safely stowed away the last words of the paragraph.
'What was it you forgot to say?' he asked.
'D'you think you _do_ make enough allowance for feelings?' asked Mr. Hewet. He had again forgotten what he had meant to say.
After intense contemplation of the immaculate Gibbon Mr. Hirst smiled at the question of his friend. He laid aside his book and considered.
'I should call yours a singularly untidy mind,' he observed. 'Feelings? Aren't they just what we do allow for? We put love up there, and all the rest somewhere down below.' With his left hand he indicated the top of a pyramid, and with his right the base.
'But you didn't get out of bed to tell me that,' he added severely.
'I got out of bed,' said Hewet vaguely, 'merely to talk I suppose.'
'Meanwhile I shall undress,' said Hirst. When naked of all but his shirt, and bent over the basin, Mr. Hirst no longer impressed one with the majesty of his intellect, but with the pathos of his young yet ugly body, for he stooped, and he was so thin that there were dark lines between the different bones of his neck and shoulders.
'Women interest me,' said Hewet, who, sitting on the bed with his chin resting on his knees, paid no attention to the undressing of Mr. Hirst.
'They're so stupid,' said Hirst. 'You're sitting on my pyjamas.'
'I suppose they _are_ stupid?' Hewet wondered.
'There can't be two opinions about that, I imagine,' said Hirst, hopping briskly across the room, 'unless you're in love--that fat woman Warrington?' he enquired.
'Not one fat woman--all fat women,' Hewet sighed.
'The women I saw to-night were not fat,' said Hirst, who was taking advantage of Hewet's company to cut his toe-nails.
'Describe them,' said Hewet.
'You know I can't describe things!' said Hirst. 'They were much like other women, I should think. They always are.'
'No; that's where we differ,' said Hewet. 'I say everything's different. No two people are in the least the same. Take you and me now.'
'So I used to think once,' said Hirst. 'But now they're all types. Don't take us,--take this hotel. You could draw circles round the whole lot of them, and they'd never stray outside.'
('You can kill a hen by doing that'), Hewet murmured.
'Mr. Hughling Elliot, Mrs. Hughling Elliot, Miss Allan, Mr. and Mrs. Thornbury--one circle,' Hirst continued. 'Miss Warrington, Mr. Arthur Venning, Mr. Perrott, Evelyn M. another circle; then there are a whole lot of natives; finally ourselves.'
'Are we all alone in our circle?' asked Hewet.
'Quite alone,' said Hirst. 'You try to get out, but you can't. You only make a mess of things by trying.'
'I'm not a hen in a circle,' said Hewet. 'I'm a dove on a tree-top.'
'I wonder if this is what they call an ingrowing toe-nail?' said Hirst, examining the big toe on his left foot.
'I flit from branch to branch,' continued Hewet. 'The world is profoundly pleasant.' He lay back on the bed, upon his arms.
'I wonder if it's really nice to be as vague as you are?' asked Hirst, looking at him. 'It's the lack of continuity--that's what's so odd bout you,' he went on. 'At the age of twentyseven, which is nearly thirty, you seem to have drawn no conclusions. A party of old women excites you still as though you were three.'
