to me that he seemed to have heard this music before. He had not yet read The Way of All Flesh; I doubt if it were published at this time, but Ernest Pontifex would have been a sympathetic figure to him. Peter knew the meaning of the word cliché, although the sound and the spelling of it were yet strange to him.
When he got to his room certain words his mother had spoken rang in his ears. Why, he asked himself, should men support women? Art is the only attraction in life and women never do good work in art. They are useless in the world aside from their functions of sex and propagation. Why should they not work so that the males could be free to think and dream? Then it occurred to him that he would be furious if any woman supported his father; that could not be borne, to have his father at home all day while his mother was away at work!
Nevertheless, he went to sleep quite happy, he has assured me, and slept soundly through the night, although he dreamed of a pair of alligators, one of which was pulling at his head and the other at his feet, while a man with an ax rained blows on his stomach. In the morning his affairs seemed to be in a desperate state. He could not bear the idea of getting up and going to the bank and yet there was nothing else he wanted to do. Of one thing only he was sure: he did not want to support himself. He did not, so far as he was able to make
