“She does. She likes you no end. Likes you currently. The way your hair goes back over your ears.”
... He misses nothing. That is his charm, his supremacy in charm over all other men. And misinterprets everything. That is his tragedy. The secret of his perpetual disappointments. He spoiled everything by the perpetual shock of his deliberate guilt and deliberate daring. That was driving me off all the time. The extraordinariness of his idea of frankness! His ‘stark talk’ is nothing compared to the untroubled outspokenness of the Taylors....
The burden of his simplicity. No one in the world could be more simple....
He thought my silence meant attention and agreement, when I wanted only to watch the transformation going on all round me. That would have gone on; if he had given me time; not destroyed everything by his sudden trick of masterfulness; the silly application of a silly idea.... It’s not only that coercion is wrong; that it’s far better to die than to be coerced. It’s the destructiveness of coercion. How long before men discover that violence drives women utterly away into cold isolation. Never, since the beginning of the world has a woman been mastered. I’m glad I know why. Why violence defeats itself....
“You don’t desert me completely? We’re still friends? You’ll go on being interested in my work?”
He knew nothing of the life that went on of itself, afterwards. I had driven him away. I felt guilty then. Because I took my decision. And absolved myself. The huge sounding darkness, expanding, turned to a forest of moving green and gold. The feeling of immense deliberate strength going forward, breaking out through life.
If it came again I should absolve myself. But it won’t. It is something in him, and in his being an Englishman and not, like Michael, an alien mind.
“Alma. I want a slice of life!”
“Of course, my very dear! Take one, Miriam. Take a large one. An oat. Not a vote. One woman, one oat....”
“I want an oat and a vote.... No. I don’t want a vote. I want to have one and not use it. Taking sides simply annihilates me.”