‘I never heard anything so callous in my life. If you were as bad as your words you would be a perfect fiend. But, mercifully, everyone in the world is better than their words, and worse than their thoughts.’
‘Ah! you are a sentimentalist, Kingston. I am a realist.’
‘Everyone thinks himself that. The only difference between the sentimentalist and the realist is that the sentimentalist’s reality is warm and beautiful, while the realist’s is glacial and hideous. And they are neither of them real realities, either. The real reality has something of both, and a great deal more than either or both together. Each view is only a glimpse of the great whole.’
‘Yes; that’s not a bad idea. However old one may grow or think one’s self, one remains astonishingly much of a baby in the face of the immensities. I suppose to take any point of view is childish. One ought to take them all together, all at once—be a drunkard and a teetotaler and a bishop and a butcher and a thief and a saint all at one moment in one’s own person. That is the only way to get the perfect knowledge. And that, I suppose, is what the idea of God is. To understand everything by being everything. However, as that is so, I don’t think one need be ashamed of being a baby with lop-sided, partial, babyish views and fanaticisms.’
‘Perhaps not. But you seemed to be proud of it. There is a great difference between being proud and not being ashamed.’
‘Yes, Kingston, there is. And I admit it. And I give in. And I am defeated. And I want my tea. And I will try to behave prettily. And be an altruist with the tea-cake instead of an individualist.’
Concessions occasionally mollify. But Isabel made hers so abruptly, so flippantly that it seemed as if she threw up the battle not conscientiously, but because she no longer thought it worth the trouble of fighting. Irritation swept over Kingston at being thus cheated like a child—played with, flouted, and put by as soon as the game had begun to weary the older player. His little victory lost all its satisfaction. He attributed his exasperation entirely to the impudent frivolity of Isabel and not at all to any underlying eagerness and enjoyment that he might have been beginning to develop in the dialogue. Outraged reasonableness swelled his demeanour as he turned in silence and led the way towards the Castle. Suddenly he felt a hand on his arm.
‘Do be friends,’ said Isabel softly and earnestly. ‘We have been friends for such ages in the past, I expect, that it would be a pity to begin badly in the present. I am only a barbarian, not a venomous toad. So do be friends.’
‘Do you really want to be?’ asked Kingston abruptly.
‘Yes,’ said Isabel—‘yes,’ she repeated slowly, as if surprised at herself.