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'In mine too. We have become like the Orientals.'

Signs of animation were seen in the bird's-nest-topped head, with its glazed eye-sockets (for the glasses were still there). 'Orientalized, are we? You think that?'

'All I meant was,' René clarified, 'that in the past it was always said that our attitude to death was different from that of the Oriental races. Today one does not hear that said, and I think that there is no longer any justification for saying it.'

'No, there is not. I do not mind being blasted out of my house by a "super-bomb" at any moment. This is a quite new attitude.—I mean my callousness about myself.'

A frown grew upon René's face, like a hieratic tree, during Percy's self-analysis. The last thing that he desired was a serious discussion with this auriferous Nobody. But such self-complacent revelation of callousness normally would have provoked him to didactic reproof.

'Ah ha, yes, very painful,' he muttered.

'Rather the reverse,' the callous one smilingly corrected. 'But I often have wondered,' he went on, 'whether the sort of orientalizing we have undergone was not due to the extraordinary growth of Jewish influence.'