"I'm nothing to want. I want you to want all the world.... Why shouldn't you?"
I think I must have talked of the greatness of serving the empire. "Yes, but splendidly," she insisted. "Not doing little things for other people—who aren't doing anything at all. I want you to conquer people and lead people.... When I see you, Stephen, sometimes—I almost wish I were a man. In order to be able to do all the things that you are going to do."
"For you," I said, "for you."
I stretched out my hand for hers, and my gesture went disregarded.
She sat rather crouched together with her eyes gazing far away across the great spaces of the park.
"That is what women are for," she said. "To make men see how splendid life can be. To lift them up—out of a sort of timid grubbiness——" She turned upon me suddenly. "Stephen," she said, "promise me. Whatever you become, you promise and swear here and now never to be grey and grubby, never to be humpy and snuffy, never to be respectable and modest and dull and a little fat, like—like everybody. Ever."
"I swear," I said.
"By me."
"By you. No book to kiss! Please, give me your hand."