“I hope that I am not disturbing you, Miss Levinger,” he said; “but to tell you the truth I fled here for refuge, the drawing-room being engaged.”
Emma started, and seeing who it was, said, “Yes, I thought so too; that is why I came away. I suppose that you are very much pleased, Captain Graves?”
“What pleases others pleases me,” he answered grimly. “I am not going to marry Mr. Milward.”
“Why don’t you like him?” she asked.
“I never said I did not like him. I have no doubt that he is very well, but he is not quite the sort of man with whom I have been accustomed to associate—that is all.”
“Well, I suppose that I ought not to say it, but I do not admire him either; not because he was rude to me last night, but because he seems so coarse. I dislike what is coarse.”
“Do you? Life itself is coarse, and I fancy that a certain amount of that quality is necessary to happiness in the world. After all, the flesh rules here and not the spirit,”—and again he looked first at the marble Aphrodite, then at the girl beneath it. “We are born of the flesh, we are flesh, and all our affections and instincts partake of it.”
“I do not agree with you at all,” Emma answered, with some warmth. “We are born of the spirit: that is the reality; the flesh is only an accident, if a necessary accident. When we allow it to master us, then our troubles begin.”
“Perhaps; but it is rather a pervading accident for many of us. In short, it makes up our world, and we cannot escape it. While we are of it the most refined among us must follow its routine—more or less. A day may come when that routine will be different, and our desires, aims and objects will vary with it, but it is not here or now.
“Everything has its season, Miss Levinger, and it is useless to try to escape from the facts of life, for at last in one shape or another they overtake us, who, strive as we may, can very rarely defy our natures.”