“If you like to put it like that. But most of us are rather proud of the obligation.”
“And if we say no; that we don’t care a pin about the human family; all we care about is our own happiness, what then?”
“Well, then we’re traitors, that’s all. We’ve been found wanting.”
“It’s rather a shame, isn’t it, to force so much responsibility on people who never asked for it?”
“Yes, I think it is. But life without responsibility wouldn’t be worth anything. That’s a conclusion I’ve reached after sixty-eight years.”
“Oh, don’t count up! You’re much too proud of those figures. But when did you discover it? When you were eighteen, like me?”
“No, when I was eighteen I thought more or less as you do; only not quite so freely, because there had been no great war to break down our ideals and set up materialism and belief in the divine right of every individual to be selfish and anti-social.”
“Do you think that’s what we are?”
“Too many people are. But I’m quite conscious that they may be right and the others wrong. In fact, the older I grow, the more convinced I am that everyone, however wrong, has some right in him, and every one, however right, some wrong.”
“Well I’m not going to marry for years and years,” said Rose. “I’m going to paint first. Art will be my husband.”