"Ah, don't you see, Miss Delarayne," Lord Henry replied, "this local interest, this domestic interest on which old age depends, has to be very strong, very intense, very highly concentrated, to make any one as tasteful as your mother gladly relinquish the other interest."
"Very, very intense," Cleopatra repeated. "Do you mean that in Baby—I mean Leo—and myself it is not sufficiently intense?"
Leonetta looked solemnly up into Lord Henry's face to catch every word of his reply, and in doing so even forgot to notice that there were young men on the road observing her.
"Don't misunderstand me," Lord Henry pleaded. "I do not wish to imply that you two girls do not love and cherish your mother. In fact, as I have just been saying, the zeal with which you help her in every way to achieve the end she wishes to achieve is most highly creditable. But, have you ever known, have you ever witnessed at close quarters, the worship of a devoted son for his mother? Have you ever been anywhere near two people, mother and son, who have been bound by that most unique and most passionate of affections, which has made the local interest of old age seem sufficiently vast and full to reconcile the mother to a happy relinquishment of that other interest,—the interest the world feels in youth?"
Still Leonetta gazed into Lord Henry's face, and still Cleopatra kept her eyes thoughtfully on the ground.
"Because, I remind you," Lord Henry concluded, "that this domestic interest, since it is so circumscribed and restricted, has to be proportionately more intense than the interest the whole world feels in youth. And that intensity a son is capable, I think, of giving his mother."
"Have you ever witnessed that?" Leonetta enquired.
Lord Henry laughed in his irresistible and ironical way. But it was obvious that genuine mirth was not his mood.
"I happen to be one of those who have actually lived it," he said.
"Is your mother still living?" Cleopatra enquired.