“In that case,” Guy murmured, “all I can say is, Iris, that yours must be a very odd dialect of English. I mean, in yours there doesn’t seem to be any distinction between words which—well, they mean rather a lot to us. We’ve never even learned how to spell most of them, they’re so inevitably part of our lives, or should be. I’m not sure to this day if there’s an s in decency. One’s born knowing them....”
“Guy, I’ve had twelve years’ unhappiness. You talk to me of those words we are born knowing. I have had twelve years’ unhappiness through not being able to forget those words.”
“Unhappiness!” Sir Maurice rapped out. “Oh, come, child! You seem to have done exactly as you pleased all these years. I’m not saying you haven’t had bad luck—we’re all sorry about that. But if you have been unhappy can you blame any one but yourself?”
Iris’s face was very stern as she looked at Sir Maurice. I could not have thought that a beautiful woman could look so stern. And she made not one gesture of womanhood. She could have made but one, and asserted her right to live according to her womanhood. But that would have seemed to her to be playing not fair. She must meet men on their own ground always, always, and she must keep herself on their own ground without showing the effort she made. She would advantage herself neither with her womanhood nor her beauty. She seemed to look for a long time at Sir Maurice. Her lips were silken red, and I thought just then that to kiss them would be to kiss the infinite.
“Yes, Maurice. I can put the blame on three words.”
The General threw the paper-knife on to a small table, where it fell with a crash. “Weakness? Wickedness? Wantonness?”
“The three words I was thinking of make Sir Maurice Harpenden.”
Then, curiously, Sir Maurice darted a look at Hilary, as though to see how he stood with Hilary. Hilary was white. He said: “I’ve told you, Maurice, that you’re not free from blame. You’ve been too damned imperious with these children.”
“All this,” Guy murmured, “has got me beat, I’m afraid.”
“It hasn’t got you beat at all, Guy,” snapped Hilary. White he was. “Maurice, years ago, didn’t realise that in our time we are not our children’s masters. Their ideas are not ours, their ambitions are not ours. And there’s no reason why they should be, since ours have sent all Europe to the devil.”