came back at him.
“Yes, but I don’t care about your discussing them here.”
“Oh!” said Marlowe, loudly, “you are afraid of the flesh. That is our trouble—we are all afraid of it, and that is why we insist and exaggerate. ‘ Hoc est corpus ,’ said God—but we turn it into hocus-pocus. There’s no hope for this generation till we can see clean flesh and ‘sweet blood’—Meredith’s phrase—without being shocked at its fine troublesomeness. If one were to strip all these people now”—he waved a hand at a fat man in a top-hat and an emaciated girl, who caught his eye and stood paralysed—“you would think it indecent. But it’s not as indecent as the portrait-painter who strips their souls for you. Some men’s work would be publicly censored, if the powers knew how to distinguish between flesh and spirit—which, thank God, they don’t.” He clapped Lathom on the shoulder. “How about that other thing of yours, my boy?”