Anne sighed. “Perhaps I’m too old for it,” she said. “I know I don’t understand it. It all seems to me so terribly business-like, and I was never a business woman.”
François laughed. “I should as soon expect one of these roses to start company promoting.”
“One thing I feel quite sure about,” she went on, drawing her lace shawl round her shoulders. “The men and women who write some of these letters have never loved.”
“Love has gone out of fashion in England, and the new wisdom has taken its place,” observed François. “Its professors are gentlemen who live on grape nuts, and are occupied municipally. They don’t believe in love, partly because a diet of grape nuts is not conducive to the emotion, partly because they are afraid of disagreeing with Mr. Bernard Shaw. You have saved me from belonging to the latter class, but only as a brand is snatched from the burning.”
“The simile is ill-chosen,” declared Anne serenely. “There’s no fire about any of the new doctrines. They are all eminently cool, calculating and dull. Dull as ditch-water, and quite as appetizing.”
François smiled. “You are a very old-fashioned woman, Anne,” he declared, “and the sight of these things near you is absurd, and even indecent.”
He swept them from the table.
“Go and fetch your Herrick, and read me how roses first came red, and lilies white.”
“My lord shall be obeyed—another time,” said Anne laughing.
“How is Mrs. Dakin?” asked François suddenly, lighting a cigarette.