“You can’t build a world out of words, as she tries to do.”
“In a thing like love, there is fact and there is theory. Theory is only falsehood disguised as fact.”
“She is not a bit pretty.”
“I believe she would rather make an enemy than make a friend.”
“Something has gone wrong with the woman of to-day. She has left the man behind, but she has not gone forward.”
“What have I been about to allow such a woman to disturb me? I came to this island a king, and I have made myself a slave.”
“It is youth that has burnt me. I am done with youth. It is fine to have reached age in theory, and yet in practice still to have one’s life ahead. My youth has been a fire in my path, and she has stamped it out.”
The moon explored the spangled sky. The fireless interwove with the pale purring noises of the night. The mad still shadows of the palms blotted the grass.
The gardener went into the verandah firmly posed as He Who has Passed through Fire, and has emerged, cured of the silly disease of youth, into a pale silver light.
For the gardener made his theories, while the suffragette’s theories made her.