He might have seen what was the matter, but he was on his own subject, and went blindly at it.
“True,” he replied, “true. But the surroundings, the circumstances, the littleness of everyday life—they crush it out. We love by rule and etiquette, at social functions and in gas-lit drawing-rooms.”
I looked at Caroline for a confirmation of Bassishaw’s methods, but the personal equation was too much for her contemplation of the artistic side of the question.
“Of course we do, Mr. Macquoid,” she returned, waiving, it seemed to me, the part that had to do with the gas. “What else can we do?”
Eleanor Macquoid raised his eyebrows and shoulders in a deferential gesture that was supposed to explain the way.
“The wind still blows,” he said, “the rain, the open air——”
“The parks,” I suggested, “are already——”
“—but,” he continued, “we wear frock-coats and carry umbrellas. We marry, and our children resume the same hopeless round. There is no romance, no poetry, no heroism in it. We become engaged for a certain period to please our friends, and marry out of consideration for one another. We have no impulse, no real instinct. We have no—no militant love.”
He seemed to receive a fresh start from the last phrase, and, alas! ruined himself irretrievably.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “even those to whom we might look for a vigorous expression of it—those who lead lives of adventurous excitement—our soldiers and sailors—are just as bad. As you remarked, Mr. Butterfield, the Roman soldiers——”