“The real truth is that you don’t feel that pathos to yourself, or not in that way and in those words ... there are one or two earlier passages that stopped me, the same sort of thing.”
“Right. We’ll have’m all out.”
“Without them the book will convince everybody.”
“No sane person can read it and keep out of socialism.”
“No.” But how fearful that sounds said by the author. As if he knew something else as well.
“Y’know you ought to be a Lycurgan, Miriam.” And then had come the sense of the door closing on all past loneliness, the rich sense of being carried forward to some new accompanied moulding change; but without any desire to go. Even with him, a moment of expression, seeming, while it lasted, enough in itself; the whole of life, when it happened not alone, but in an understanding presence; led to results, the destructive demand for the pinning of it down to some small shape of specialised action. Could he not see that the thing so surprising her and coming to him also as a surprise, was enough in itself ... would disappear if she rushed forward into activities, masquerading, with empty hands, as one who had something to give. Yet he was going forward into activities.... She ought, having learned from him a clear theory of the working of the whole of human life, to be willing to follow, only too glad of the opportunity of any sort of share, even as an onlooker in the making of the new world.
But if she responded, she would be supporting his wrong estimate of her, his way of endowing everyone with his own gifts, seeing people only as capability, waiting for opportunities for action. She wanted only further opportunities with him, of forgetfulness, and the strange following moments of expression.
“Everyone will be socialists soon; there’s no need to join societies.”
“There’s mountains, my dear Miriam, mountains of work ahead, that only an organised society can compass. And you’d like the Lycurgans. We’ll make you a Lycurgan.”
“What could I do?”