Then he took a breath and said: “I will not seek to extenuate the specific forms which life’s normal cruelty assumes in your native sphere. It is all one⁠—for the reproach of cruelty rests upon somewhat sentimental grounds. You would scarcely even have levelled it, while you were in that atmosphere, for fear of being ridiculous in your own eyes. You left it to the drones to make, and rightly. That you make it now bears witness to a certain estrangement, which I should be sorry to see increase; since he who falls in the habit of making it is in danger of being lost to life, to the manner of life to which he was born. Do you know, Engineer, what I mean by being lost to life? I, I know it, I see it here every day. Six months at most after they get here, these young people⁠—and they are mostly young who come⁠—have lost every idea they had, except flirtation and temperature. And if they remain a year, they will have lost the power of grasping any other; they will find any other ‘cruel’⁠—or, more precisely, ignorant and inadequate. You are fond of anecdote⁠—I could serve your turn. I could tell you of a young man I know, a husband and son, who was up here for eleven months. He was a little older than you, yes, rather older.