"The five seconds that you have before rushing up-stairs to dress," said I, "don't give me adequate time to expound a philosophic system." Now if Adrian or I had talked to Jaffery about soul-progression and the Will to Power and suggested that he was missing the essentials of life, we should have been met with bellows of rude and profane derision.

I don't believe he had even roughly considered what kind of an individuality he had, still less enquired into the state of his spiritual being.

But the flip of a girl he professed so much to despise came along and reduced him to a condition of helpless introspection.

I cannot say that it lasted very long.

Psychology and metaphysics and aesthetics lay outside Jaffery's sphere.