“Will you?” he answered. “But it is so cold there.”
“Yes, but I shall stay with Palestra. It is quite comfortable.”
“What takes you to Florence?”
“I don’t know,” said Hermione slowly. Then she looked at him with her slow, heavy gaze. “Barnes is starting his school of æsthetics, and Olandese is going to give a set of discourses on the Italian national policy—”
“Both rubbish,” he said.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Hermione.
“Which do you admire, then?”
“I admire both. Barnes is a pioneer. And then I am interested in Italy, in her coming to national consciousness.”
“I wish she’d come to something different from national consciousness, then,” said Birkin; “especially as it only means a sort of commercial-industrial consciousness. I hate Italy and her national rant. And I think Barnes is an amateur.”
Hermione was silent for some moments, in a state of hostility. But yet, she had got Birkin back again into her world! How subtle her influence was, she seemed to start his irritable attention into her direction exclusively, in one minute. He was her creature.