“Lionel, believe me, I thought a great deal.”
“Could you not telephone to your friends?”
“Telephone! What for, and to whom? When I think of the bundle of wires I used to despatch, and of the trayful of cards and notes the footman was wont to hand to me; each one in view of some Ranelagh meeting, a box for a first night, a Saturday to Monday invitation, and many more important nothings which formed the _epopée_ of my London life! But who would have cared to know of my inner thoughts, of my heart’s desires? We shall have to learn a new language before we can write again, Lionel; for the phraseology that suited the shams of our past life would be inappropriate in our Paradise regained.”
“Ah! Lionel, he is the very last one I could have set eyes on! I have not seen him since the Islington Tournament. How long ago that seems. I heard a fortnight ago, through my guide, Nettie Collins, that he only came home on the day of the first exodus!”
“Perhaps you have seen him, Gwen, but not known him again. Guides are no good in these family relationships.”
“I must say candidly that philosophy was too much for me. I can, as yet, only grasp what touches my heart. We shall talk much, think deeply, you and I, my dearest Ly.”
“Not that name, dearest! It burns your sweet lips. It was the synthesis of the false life you and I lived.”
“Then it shall be, Lion. My Lion will you be?”
“Tell me; why have you never loved? A man is free, and has every opportunity to choose; it is not like us women, who are told from infancy what we are worth and what kind of market the world is.”
“Love did not enter into the programme of my school life, Gwen. Had love been part of education, I doubt whether our old world would have lasted as long as it did. It is because love has had no fair play for centuries that injustice, hypocrisy and tyranny have ruled unmolested. Love may be, in words, the principle by which all things are ordained, but hatred is the real password, and we are so accustomed to the clever trickery that we do not detect the fraud.”
“He took me to Italy several times during my long vacations. I remember being taken by him to the Uffizi Gallery and being told to look at the pictures;—I used to stand transfixed in front of Raphael’s Madonnas. Then dad would turn up—too soon—with some Italian lady whom he had no doubt picked up—by appointment—and my dream was over.”