"Why women in your position don't take lovers . . ." the girl said, hotly. "Or that women in your position do take lovers . . ."
Mrs. Duchemin looked up; in spite of its tears her white face had an air of serious dignity:
"Oh, no, Valentine," she said, using her deeper tones. "There's something beautiful, there's something thrilling about chastity. I'm not narrow-minded. Censorious! I don't condemn! But to preserve in word, thought and action a lifelong fidelity. . . . It's no mean achievement. . . ."
"You mean like an egg and spoon race," Miss Wannop said.
"It isn't," Mrs. Duchemin replied gently, "the way I should have put it. Isn't the real symbol Atalanta, running fast and not turning aside for the golden apple? That always seemed to me the real truth hidden in the beautiful old legend. . . ."
"I don't know," Miss Wannop said, "when I read what Ruskin says about it in the Crown of Wild Olive. Or no! It's the Queen of the Air. That's his Greek rubbish, isn't it? I always think it seems like an egg-race in which the young woman didn't keep her eyes in the boat. But I suppose it comes to the same thing."
Mrs. Duchemin said:
"My dear! Not a word against John Ruskin in this house."
Miss Wannop screamed.
An immense voice had shouted: