"How many members are there in this Fabian Society of yours?" he asked.

The little man became at once defensive in his manner.

"About seven hundred," he said; "perhaps eight."

"Like--like the ones here?"

The little man gave a nervous self-satisfied laugh. "I suppose they're
up to sample," he said.

The little man dropped out of existence and we emerged upon the Strand.
Ewart twisted his arm into a queerly eloquent gesture that gathered up
all the tall facades of the banks, the business places, the projecting
clock and towers of the Law Courts, the advertisements, the luminous
signs, into one social immensity, into a capitalistic system gigantic
and invincible.

"These socialists have no sense of proportion," he said. "What can you
expect of them?"

IV

Ewart, as the embodiment of talk, was certainly a leading factor in my
conspicuous failure to go on studying. Social theory in its first crude
form of Democratic Socialism gripped my intelligence more and more
powerfully. I argued in the laboratory with the man who shared my bench
until we quarreled and did not speak and also I fell in love.