“You’ve asked me a question, Virginia, and now I will ask you one—a baby question. What is it you most want in the world?”
“But, Ivor, remember that I’m thirty!”
“Well?”
“Then there’s only one answer, and that is in one word—understanding! Just that—understanding! The second childhood of a woman’s dreams lies in the word, Ivor....”
The night was so dark and still, yet somehow noisy with their personalities, that Ivor had a feeling that she and he were children....
“We’re like children playing in the dark, Virginia—I feel, do you know, that nothing we say this moment matters at all! It simply doesn’t matter, it just belongs to this childish moment....”
“Then I will ask you your question back,” she took him swiftly up. “What is it you most want in the world, Ivor? Remember,” she added, “you have said this is a childish moment, so you can be sincere.”
His chair creaked passionately as he sat up to look closely at her.
“I want,” he said firmly, “the loveliness in people. No less. You’ll say that’s pretty arrogant, and I suppose it is. But I want it all the same....”
“I’ve had a bit,” he explained, “so I know it’s good—oh, wonderfully worth having, Virginia! But one can’t keep it—anyway, I couldn’t keep my little bit. Wasn’t worthy, I suppose. But if you’ve got to wait quietly until you are worthy of a thing you might wait till the Last Trump and still not get it. Better to snatch than get left, I think.... One’s best moments draw that loveliness out of people, and then one loses it. Little demons of prejudice and resentment make one lose it—that shining loveliness in people, Virginia! And when that’s in them they have clean eyes—amazing, isn’t it?—but later on their eyes are not so clean, and one’s own are mirrored in theirs. People say that’s ‘life.’ Everything that gets dirty is called ‘life,’ Virginia. Everything that dies is called ‘life.’ ...”