Touch and Go: A Play in Three Acts

by D. H. Lawrence

MRS. BARLOW (to OLIVER). You didn't mention it. Where have you met Miss Wrath? She's been about the world, I believe.

ANABEL. About the world?—no, Mrs. Barlow. If one happens to know Paris and London—-

MRS. BARLOW. Paris and London! Well, I don't say you are all together an adventuress. My husband seems very pleased with you—for Winifred's sake, I suppose—and he's wrapped up in Winifred.

ANABEL. Winifred is an artist.

MRS. BARLOW. All my children have the artist in them. They get it from my family. My father went mad in Rome. My family is born with a black fate—they all inherit it.

OLIVER. I believe one is master of one's fate sometimes, Mrs. Barlow. There are moments of pure choice.

MRS. BARLOW. Between two ways to the same end, no doubt. There's no changing the end.

OLIVER. I think there is.

MRS. BARLOW. Yes, you have a parvenu's presumptuousness somewhere about you.

OLIVER. Well, better than a blue-blooded fatalism.