“It would be very wrong and very radical of you to neglect your own church. A good Conservative always supports the institutions of his country,” he said.
“That is the good of being women,” she answered, looking at him with a mixture of friendship and mischief. “We are not allowed to vote, and we need not be a Conservative or anything, and as for the institutions of the country, I am not sure that I like them, or even know what they are.”
“Marriage is one.”
“With or without love? For love is not an institution.”
“Sometimes; well, you know as well as I do that we can get on without love.”
“Love,” said Launa, “is the thing in life, it is—”
“What do you love?”
“Whom? What? I love life and movement—the wind and the sea. The being alive to-day is joy. Look at the grass, the river, the water! If I could only be at ‘Solitude,’ to smell the air as it comes across that sweep of woods!”
“To smell it alone?”
“Alone,” she replied.