"If you please."
And in this manner they departed, Miss Granger just touching George Fairfax's coat-sleeve with the tips of her carefully-gloved fingers; Clarissa and her husband walking before them, arm in arm. Mr. Fairfax did his utmost to make himself agreeable during that short walk to the station; so much so that Sophia unbent considerably, and was good enough to inform him of her distaste for these frivolous pleasures, and of her wonder that other people could go on from year to year with an appearance of enjoyment.
"I really don't see what else one can do with one's life, Miss Granger," her companion answered lightly. "Of course, if a man had the genius of a Beethoven, or a Goethe, or a Michael Angelo—or if he were 'a heaven-born general,' like Clive, it would be different; he would have some purpose and motive in his existence. But for the ruck of humanity, what can they do but enjoy life, after their lights?"
If all the most noxious opinions of Voltaire, and the rest of the
Encyclopedists, had been expressed in one sentence, Miss Granger could not
have looked more horrified than she did on hearing this careless remark of
Mr. Fairfax's.
She gave a little involuntary shudder, and wished that George Fairfax had been one of the model children, so that she might have set him to learn the first five chapters in the first book of Chronicles, and thus poured the light of what she called Biblical knowledge upon his benighted mind.
"I do not consider the destiny of a Michael Angelo or a Goethe to be envied," she said solemnly. "Our lives are given us for something better than painting pictures or writing poems."
"Perhaps; and yet I have read somewhere that St. Luke was a painter," returned George Fairfax.
"Read somewhere," was too vague a phrase for Miss Granger's approval.
"I am not one of those who set much value on tradition," she said with increased severity. "It has been the favourite armour of our adversaries."
"Our adversaries?"