“But this was before I knew you.”
“Don’t you believe it. I never lived at all before you knew me.”
“Absurd boy!”
“I’m getting on for thirty.”
“You can’t expect me to remember it whilst you behave as if you were seventeen. Take the book up again, let us give it an honest trial.”
He read on obediently, and she listened with a real desire for instruction. Then all at once she put her fingers in her ears and called a halt.
“That will do. Ring for tea, I can’t listen to any more....”
He went on nevertheless: “‘Mind is not the author of Matter.’ I say, this is jolly good. You can read it the other way too. ‘Matter is not the author of mind. There is no matter ... put matter under the foot of mind.’ Put Mrs. Eddy under the foot of a militant suffragette. Oh! I say ... listen to this....”
“No, I won’t, not to another word. Poor Gabriel....” He threw the book away.
“Always that damned fellow!” he said.