“But they do!”
“Have they shown it?”
“What do you know of the Russian Bolsheviks?”
“What do you? You just look at the labels on people. Nothing genuine without the red label—and everything genuine with.”
She said he saw things from his “bourgeois” standpoint, and he laughed cheerfully at her social classifications; there was no bourgeoisie in England, he said; she attempted some of the stock cynicisms and sarcasms of the movement but with an unusual lack of conviction. It was easy for him to criticize, she said, living as he did on invested capital.
“It would make it easier,” he smiled. “But really I live on my fees.”
“You have invested capital.”
“Some. I don’t live on it.”
They had exhausted the dispute for a time. After all she reflected she hadn’t put up such a bad fight, considering her age and standing. The momentary glow of controversial exasperation faded again. They drifted to the more immediate question in which they were interested, the question of what she was to do with her life.