The conductor hushes the orchestra—gives gentle permission again to the flute. "No, dear, I oughtn't to say. Because I know how you feel about it, exactly. But what I thought of saying was...."
"Yes. Do go on, Charlotte!"
"Couldn't you have made up your mind to go—just this once? Because you were asked, this time."
"I shouldn't have enjoyed myself."
"Of course not, dear! Neither should I. But you know what I think. It all turns on a question of prudence. Anything is better than an esclandre." The other instruments come in again, and the conductor is warming to his work.
"I don't see why we want anything French in it. There's nothing of that sort, so far as I know."
"Of course not, with the people!" Given, that is, this character cast, Parisian laxities have no chance. But distinctions must be made. "Nobody's the least likely to do, but people will say, exactly the same as if they did do." Better expressed by Hamlet, in the plague he offered poor Ophelia as a dowry! Who shall escape calumny?
Marianne mutters something her friend takes to be, "I don't care what people say." The orchestra—pursuing our strained musical metaphor—sees a crescendo phrase ahead, and the conductor interprets it as accelerando.
"That's where you're so wrong, dear—do forgive me for saying it! But you are wrong. Pure and honest natures like yours always make that mistake. Of course you know, and I know—we all know—that to speak of anything really wrong in the same breath with your husband would be absurd, and even this fashionable girl for that matter. I mean, you know, really wrong." A nod-supported whisper—the music goes to pianissimo quite suddenly; consider the sharp ears of Mrs. Steptoe, and Harmood, in the kitchen! But enough of that. Our text calls for no secrecies; brush them aside, and resume without pedals, but con espressione. "But everyone is not like you, dear! So many people take pleasure in putting—well! the most horrid constructions on the most innocent.... What?" For Mrs. Charlotte had stopped to gloat so long over the first syllable of innocent—she did not enjoy the "horrid constructions" half so much—that she had not heard what Marianne said. Who, on request, repeated it:
"I didn't say I didn't care what people said ... oh well!—I've forgotten what I did say now, and it doesn't matter. Anyhow, I consider I've done my duty, and now I simply won't go to any of their dinners, come what may, Acropolis Club or no! So there!" This is a stronger ground than a plea of simple non-enjoyment as a cause of abstention, and Charlotte makes no protest. Her mind, too, is attracted by another point. She speaks dreamily to express that it is feeling its way, as through a mist, to illumination.