10
To see the earth whirling slowly round, coloured, its waters catching the light. She stood in the middle of the floor hurriedly discarding her clothes. They were old and worn, friendly and alive with the fresh strength of her body. Other clothes would be got somehow; just by going on and working ... there’s so much—eternally. It’s stupendous. I’ve no right to be in it; but I’m in. Someone means me to be in. I can’t help it. Fancy people being alive. You would think everyone would go mad. She found herself in bed, sitting up in her flannellette dressing jacket. The stagnant air beneath the sharp downward slope of the ceiling was warmed by the gas. The gaslight glared beautifully over her shoulder down on to the page....
11
All that has been said and known in the world is in language, in words; all we know of Christ is in Jewish words; all the dogmas of religion are words; the meanings of words change with people’s thoughts. Then no one knows anything for certain. Everything depends upon the way a thing is put, and that is a question of some particular civilisation. Culture comes through literature, which is a half-truth. People who are not cultured are isolated in barbaric darkness. The Greeks were cultured; but they are barbarians ... why? Whether you agree or not, language is the only way of expressing anything and it dims everything. So the Bible is not true; it is a culture. Religion is wrong in making word-dogmas out of it. Christ was something. But Christianity which calls Him divine and so on is false. It clings to words which get more and more wrong ... then there’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be quite sure of rejoicing about. The Christians are irritating and frightened. The man with side-whiskers understands something. But.
CHAPTER V
1
Then all these years they might have been going sometimes to those lectures. Pater talking about them—telling about old Rayleigh and old Kelvin as if they were his intimates—flinging out remarks as if he wanted to talk and his audience were incapable of appreciation ... light, heat, electricity, sound-waves; and never saying that members could take friends or that there were special lectures for children ... Sir Robert Ball ... “a fascinating Irish fellow with the gift of the gab who made a volcano an amusing reality” Krakatoa ... that year of wonderful sunsets and afterglows ... the air half round the world, full of fine dust ... it seemed cruel ... deprivation ... all those years; all that wonderful knowledge just at hand. And now it was coming, the Royal Institution ... this evening. She must find out whether one had to dress and exactly how one got in. Albemarle Street.... It all went on in Albemarle Street.
2
“We might meet” said Mr. Hancock, busily washing his hands and lifting them in the air to shake back his coat sleeves. Miriam listened from her corner behind the instrument cabinet, stupid with incredulity; he could not be speaking of the lecture ... he must be ... he had meant all the time that he was going to be with her at the lecture.
“... in the library at half past eight.”