"What was wrong with it?"
I noticed that the Colonel and Lady Lathkill each had a little dish of rice, no fish, and that they were served second—oh, humility!—and that neither took the white wine. No, they had no wine-glasses. The remoteness gathered about them, like the snows on Everest. The dowager peered across at me occasionally, like a white ermine out of the snow, and she had that cold air about her, of being good, and containing a secret of goodness: remotely, ponderously, fixedly knowing better. And I, with my chatter, was one of those fabulous fleas that are said to hop upon glaciers.
"Wrong with it? It was wrong, all wrong. In the rain, a soppy crowd, with soppy bare heads, soppy emotions, soppy chrysanthemums and prickly laurestinus! A steam of wet mob-emotions! Ah, no, it shouldn't be allowed."
Carlotta's face had fallen. She again could feel death in her bowels, the kind of death the war signifies.
"Wouldn't you have us honour the dead?" came Lady Lathkill's secretive voice across at me, as if a white ermine had barked.
"Honour the dead!" My mind opened in amazement. "Do you think they'd be honoured?"
I put the question in all sincerity.
"They would understand the intention was to honour them," came her reply.
I felt astounded.
"If I were dead, would I be honoured if a great, steamy wet crowd came after me with soppy chrysanthemums and prickly laurestinus? Ugh! I'd run to the nethermost ends of Hades. Lord, how I'd run from them!"