“What do you expect in Islington?”
“I call it catering for slaves, and that worst sort of slavery that does not realise its own condition.”
They walked on and passed a bookshop. Eve turned back.
“Look again!”
Kate Duveen laughed.
“I suppose, for instance, that annoys you?”
She pointed to a row of a dozen copies of a very popular novel written by a woman, and called “The Renunciation.”
“It does annoy me.”
“That toshy people rave over tosh! A friend of mine knows the authoress. She is a dowdy little bourgeoise who lives in a country town, and they tell me that book has made her ten thousand pounds. She thinks she has a mission, and that she is a second George Eliot.”
“Doesn’t it annoy you?”