“Lascivious! well, why not? I can’t see I do a woman any more harm by sleeping with her than by dancing with her⁠ ⁠… or even talking to her about the weather. It’s just an interchange of sensations instead of ideas, so why not?”

“Be as promiscuous as the rabbits!” said Hammond.

“Why not? What’s wrong with rabbits? Are they any worse than a neurotic, revolutionary humanity, full of nervous hate?”

“But we’re not rabbits, even so,” said Hammond.

“Precisely! I have my mind: I have certain calculations to make in certain astronomical matters that concern me almost more than life or death. Sometimes indigestion interferes with me. Hunger would interfere with me disastrously. In the same way starved sex interferes with me. What then?”

“I should have thought sexual indigestion from surfeit would have interfered with you more seriously,” said Hammond satirically.