“On this point, I cannot agree with you. Those who dispute the right of property take no account of the reality of things. Immemorial custom has made the right of property as much a ‘category of thought,’ as Space is, or Time.”
Mary, who was just behind us, interrupted him: “Oh, Edmund is reading you a lecture already, I hear. My dear, you had better come and flirt with Mme. Lola, and I’ll take Miss Janina with me.”
She came and put her arm round my waist, saying that she liked me very much indeed. This I answered with an indulgent smile, always suitable when women pay compliments to women.
She felt that this was not the way to win me, so she set to talk about literature.
“There are some books,” she said, “in which I find a rest, and which enable me to escape from reality altogether. And that’s why I can’t bear such authors—Zola, for instance—as bring dirt which ought to revolt any delicate mind, into a sphere where poetry alone should reign supreme.”
I hazarded another objection here.
“Do you not think that the first step towards healing the ulcers of society is to lay them bare?”
“Ugh! why write about them? We all know them too well! In life itself, there is, I tell you, quite enough of sorrow and of miasma. You, so young, may possibly not have as yet had any opportunity of coming into contact with them.... No, no: why should we ourselves spoil the short sweet moments when it is possible to dream?”
She then proposed that we should take a rest on a seat of bamboo-work, ensconced amongst exotic plants and shrubs in large green tubs. As soon as we had sat down, her trained pet lamb came and lay down on the skirt of her dress.
“Every one ought to have some sacred book—some Bible or other—ought he not?” she asked, after a short silence. “Alas! there is no one, with ever so little knowledge of philosophy, who can possibly believe in the existence of God—and all the rest of it.