“And how is one to begin?” asked Mrs. Tredegar.
“Well, first cultivate a choice taste in food, wine, and cigarettes. Then disabuse yourself of the idea that the angelic, either in man or woman, is in any way desirable; purge yourself of that clog to all true appreciation of sensation—that interfering bugbear which still survives with an effete superstition—known as a conscience; get into an Hellenic state of mind by joyous perception of the beautiful, and realise that the supreme cultivation of the ego is the ultima ratio of existence.”
“But then we should only love ourselves,” observed a dissentient.
“As self-knowledge is the beginning of all wisdom, so is self-love the beginning of all passion,” returned Mr. Singleton oracularly.
During the frivolous chorus that followed this remark, Hammerdyke crossed the room and sat down by Clytie's side. “You seem to be very merry over here. What is it all about?” he asked.
“It's only Mr. Singleton trying to play with paradoxes,” Clytie replied, laughing. “He is a chartered libertine, and nobody minds him.”
“That always strikes me as so odd when I get back to civilised life—the tremendous amount of talking one has to get through—and no one seems to get any further with it. Everybody seems bound to provide himself with a theory of life, as they call it—either sincere or paradoxical. Why do they do it?”
He had pulled his chair a little aside, so that, when Clytie turned round, they were cut off from the main group close by. She replied laughingly to his question, and the conversation took a light, personal turn.
“I seem to have known you so long,” he said after a while, “and yet this is the first time I have been able to say a word to you by yourself. I used to hear of you, you know, in Africa, when Caroline sent me a budget of news. I used quite to wonder what you were like.”
“Caroline and I are great friends,” she replied. “She has been very, very kind to me.”