“Oh, I say!” and there was petulance in her tone. “Don’t try to come that over me! Soma and psyche indeed! D’you think I don’t know my Plotinus Arbiter? You can’t quote that stuff at this child. D’you read him too?”
“Oh, off and on,” Gav replied.
“Fancy that now! This is a bit of luck. Oh, we shall get on all right. You know Joseph de Maistre’s essay, of course?”
“Which?” he asked guardedly. There might be some trap in this.
“Oh, the Arbiter’s influence on the Transcendentalist poets—you know.”
“Afraid I haven’t read it,” confessed Gav.
“You haven’t missed much, rum-ti-tum, as Marie Lloyd used to sing, but I’ll lend it you if you’re keen. I say, you know,” she went on hurriedly, “I’d a bit o’ luck yesterday. You know that 1642 edition—Amsterdam? Picked up a copy of that, tooled leather and all the woodcuts, but the back flyleaf just a bit soiled. Eight quid. Cheap, wasn’t it?”
“He’s your favourite author, I suppose?” he ventured.
“Was once, Mr. Inquisitive. No, I must say I’ve been rather off old Plo since the Bloomsbury push took him up so strong. I’m on the Hellenic tack now—Pelester of Chios, you know, and Xanthus the Younger, and the fragments of the Thracian papyrus that Bötzdorff edited—though I don’t think much of his gloss, str—th I don’t.”
“I must show you my Plotinus,” Gav broke in on her gathering enthusiasm. “It’s a fine copy. 1722, I think.”