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Jones fatly supine on gracious grass, his eyes closed against the sun, stuffing his pipe: ‘This rose has almost made history. You have had the bush for some time, have you not? One does become attached to things one has long known.’ Januarius Jones was not particularly interested in flowers.

‘I have a better reason than that. In this bush is imprisoned a part of my youth, as wine is imprisoned in a wine jar. But with this difference: my wine jar always renews itself.’

‘Oh,’ remarked Jones, despairing, ‘there is a story here, then.’

‘Yes, dear boy. Rather a long story. But you are not comfortable lying there.’

‘Whoever is completely comfortable,’ Jones rushed into the breach, ‘unless he be asleep? It is the fatigue caused by man’s inevitable contact with the earth which bears him, be he sitting, standing, or lying, which keeps his mind in a continual fret over futilities. If a man, if a single man, could be freed for a moment from the forces of gravity, concentrating his weight upon that point of his body which touches the earth, what would he not do? He would be a god, the lord of life, causing the high gods to tremble on their thrones: he would thunder at the very gates of infinity like a mailed knight. As it is, he must ever have behind his mind a dull wonder how anything composed of fire and air and water and omnipotence in equal parts can be so damn hard.’