“The only virtue of King Richard,” said Braintree, “was staying out of the country.”
“Perhaps,” she answered. “He and his virtue might come back.”
“When he comes back he will find the country a good deal changed,” said the Syndicalist grimly. “No serfs; no vassals; and even the labourers daring to look him in the face. He will find something has broken its chain; something has opened, expanded, been lifted up; something wild and terrible and gigantic that strikes terror even into the heart of a lion.”
“Something?” repeated Olive.
“The heart of a man,” he replied.
Olive stood looking in a sort of daze or dazzle from one to the other. For on one side stood all the things she had dreamed of, clothed in their right century. And on the other something more deeply thrilling, of which she had never dreamed. Her tangled emotions broke out of her with a rather curious cry.
“Oh I wish Monkey were back again!”
Braintree glanced sharply at her and asked rather gruffly: “Why?”
“Because you are all changing,” she said. “Because you are all talking as you did in the play. Because you are both of you fierce and splendid and magnificent and magnanimous and have neither of you a grain of common sense.”
“I didn’t know you specialised in having common sense,” said Braintree.