“Indeed, Iris, how can I argue about love against your experience!”
“My friend, you can’t shame me! For I am shame itself come to life. Yes, I have lit many small fires to quench one large fire. I have been unsuccessful. Thank God, thank God for that! And now let the one large fire burn, with a boy and a girl of eighteen for fuel. Nothing else matters.”
“My dear, so much else matters! Restraints, nobilities, decencies, sacrifices!”
We passed slowly through a village High Street, hailed and mocked good-naturedly by a group of men emerging from an inn.
She said: “In the ancient love-tales and the songs of the Jongleurs we read of maidens sacrificed on the altar of circumstance. I was a maiden, even I, once upon a time. Dear, I am afraid you must take my word for that. And I, a maid, was sacrificed to the vulgar ambitions of a Sir Maurice. So let us not talk of sacrifice. It makes me sick with anger.”
Not fast, not slow, the Hispano-Suiza swept through Surrey. Then she said sharply: “But if Venice had had a child!”
I could not see her face, for her hat and the darkness were between us. But ever so faintly I could see her mouth, and her lips were parted, as though she was praying. I wondered if she was praying to whom she could be praying. “She has a God,” had said that captain of men.
“And why did you say that so bitterly, Iris?”
“Was I bitter? Oh, that’s a sin, to think of that angel and to be bitter.”
“Angel? Did you say angel?”