“Now here’s a strange thing. That time you met them, the first thing you said when they’d gone, was what’s wrong with them? And the next time I met them they said there’s something wrong with him. The truth is you are polar opposites and have everything to learn from each other.”
“Elizabeth Snowden Poole.”
“Yes. And without him no one would have heard of her. No one understood. And now psychology is going absolutely her way. In fifty years’ time her books will be as clear as daylight.”
“Damned obstructive classics. That’s what all our books will be. But I’ll give you Mrs. Poole. Mrs. Poole is a very wonderful lady. She’s the unprecedented.”
“There you are. Then you must admit the Taylors.”
“I’m not so sure about your little Taylors. There’s nothing to be said, you know, for just going about not doing things.”
“They are wonderful. Their atmosphere is the freest I know.”
“I envy you your enthusiasms, Miriam. Even your misplaced enthusiasms.”
“You go there, worn out, at the end of the day, and have to walk, after a long tram-ride through the wrong part of London, along raw new roads, dark little houses on either side, solid, without a single break, darkness, a street-lamp, more darkness, another lamp; and something in the air that lets you down and down. Partly the thought of these streets increasing, all the time, all over London. Yet when someone said walking home after a good evening at the Taylors’ that the thought of having to settle down in one of those houses made him feel suicidal, I felt he was wrong; and saw them, from inside, bright and big; people’s homes.”
“They’re not big, Miriam. You wanted to marry him.”