“No! No! It wasn’t. The first was worst—that horse-shambles. Oh, they killed two more horses. And five bulls! Yes, a regular butchery. But some of it was very neat work; those toreadors did some very pretty feats. One stood on his cloak while a bull charged him.”
“I think,” interrupted Kate, “if I knew that some of those toreadors were going to be tossed by the bull, I’d go to see another bull-fight. Ugh, how I detest them! The longer I live the more loathesome the human species becomes to me. How much nicer the bulls are!”
“Oh, quite!” said Owen vaguely. “Exactly. But still there was some very skilful work, very pretty. Really very plucky.”
“Yah!” snarled Kate. “Plucky! They with all their knives and their spears and cloaks and darts—and they know just how a bull will behave. It’s just a performance of human beings torturing animals, with those common fellows showing off, how smart they are at hurting a bull. Dirty little boys maiming flies—that’s what they are. Only grown-up, they are bastards, not boys. Oh, I wish I could be a bull, just for five minutes. Bastard, that’s what I call it!”
“Well!” laughed Owen uneasily. “It is rather.”
“Call that manliness!” cried Kate. “Then thank God a million times that I’m a woman, and know poltroonery and dirty-mindedness when I see it.”
Again Owen laughed uncomfortably.
“Go upstairs and change,” she said. “You’ll die.”
“I think I’d better. I feel I might die any minute, as a matter of fact. Well, till dinner then. I’ll tap at your door in half an hour.”
Kate sat trying to sew, but her hand trembled. She could not get the bull-ring out of her mind, and something felt damaged in her inside.