"Oh, but of course, of course—"
"It's no good, you know, barring certain very obvious subjects because of that idiotic prepossession one has for what is known as good taste. The only really living thing is bad taste. All the preliminaries to real union, union of any sort, mind or body, consist in the chucking away of reticences and cautions and proprieties, and each single preliminary is in bad taste. If we're going to be friends we'll have to go in for that. Bad taste. Execrable taste. Now—"
He stopped.
"Well?"
She was looking at him in a kind of alarm. This was the longest speech by far he had made, and she could not imagine what was coming at the end. He was busy as usual flinging her on to paper—the number of his studies of her was by this time something monstrous—and was glancing at her swiftly and professionally at every sentence.
"About husbands. Tell me what you think about husbands."
"About husbands? But they're not bad taste," she said.
"Tell me what you think about them."
"Well, they're people one is very fond of," she said, with her hands clasped round her knees.
"Oh. You find that?"