"He was evidently not too young to have bad thoughts," said Claudia, supporting her friend; "and he was certainly old enough to know better."
"He!" ejaculated Ideala. "It is far more likely to be she. Do you read the reviews? You will find that all the most objectionable books are written by women—and condemned by men who lift up their voices now, as they have done from time immemorial, and insist that we should do as they say, and not as they do."
"I am afraid you are right," said Charlie Lloyd. "So many of our best women—I mean the women who are likely to make most impression on the age—are going that way now."
"But what horrid things you say, Ideala," one of the ladies chimed in, "and you make everybody else say horrid things. That 'Passion of Delysle' is not a bit worse than Tennyson's 'Fatima'—and there's a lot more in it—that part about 'the roll of worlds,' you know, is quite grand."
"I always liked that idea," Ideala observed.
"And—and—" the lady continued, "where she looks at everything, you know. She was very properly seeking distraction, and found it for a moment in the contemplation of nature, and that softened her mood, so that when the inevitable rush of recollection comes and forces the thought of him back upon her, her feeling finds expression in a prayer —instead of—instead of—"
"A blasphemous remonstrance," Ideala put in. "Oh, I don't deny that there is just enough to be said in favour of all these things to make them sell—and this one has two unusual points of interest. It opens with a riddle, and the lady's lover is a priest, which gives an additional zest to the charm of wrong-doing, a sauce piquante for jaded appetites."
"Why do you call the opening verses a riddle?" said Charlie Lloyd.
"Because I fancy no one will ever guess what kind of a place it was—
This mountain island,
This saintly shrine, this fort—