Page:The Criterion - Volume 4.djvu/79

 Gratitude interrupted the hymn. Gregory had never felt so much ashamed in his life. His monocle tinkled against the buttons of his waistcoat. Deliberately, he placed one foot before the other, walking with correctness, but as though on a tightrope. Yet another insult to the thing. He wished to God he were sober. He wished to God he hadn't desired with such precision that 'dishevelled tuft of kisses.' Threepence-halfpenny! But he could still run back and give half a crown, two half crowns. He could still run back. Step by step, as though on the tightrope, he advanced, keeping step with Spiller. Four steps, five steps eleven steps, twelve steps, thirteen steps. Oh, the unluckiness! Eighteen steps, nineteen Too late; it would be ridiculous to turn back now, it would be too conspicuously silly. Twenty-three, twenty-four steps. The suspicion was a certainty of queasiness, a growing certainty.

'At the same time,' Spiller was saying, 'I really don't see how the vast majority of scientific truths and hypotheses can ever become the subject of art. I don't see how they can be given poetic, emotive significance without losing their precision. How could you render the electro-magnetic theory of light, for example, in a moving literary form? It simply can't be done.'

'Oh, for God's sake,' shouted Gregory with a sudden outburst of fury, 'for God's sake, shut up! How can you go on talking and talking away like this?' He hiccoughed again, more profoundly and menacingly than before.

'But why on earth not?' asked Spiller with a mild astonishment.

'Talking about art and science and poetry,' said Gregory tragically, almost with tears in his eyes, 'when there are two million people in England on the brink of starvation. Two million.' He meant the repetition to be impressive, but he hiccoughed yet once more; he was feeling definitely rather sick. 'Living in stinking hovels,'