Going
to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now--I don't suppose
I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass
through the world without colliding with it or moving it--and
I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil.
I don't die--I don't fall in love. And if other people die
or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there.
You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle,
which--thank God, and thank Italy, and thank you--is now more
beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before."
She said solemnly, "I wish something would happen to
you, my dear friend; I wish something would happen to you."
"But why?" he asked, smiling. "Prove to me why I don't
do as I am."
She also smiled, very gravely. She could not prove it.
No argument existed. Their discourse, splendid as it had
been, resulted in nothing, and their respective opinions and
policies were exactly the same when they left the church as
when they had entered it.
Harriet was rude at lunch. She called Miss Abbott a
turncoat and a coward to her face. Miss Abbott resented
neither epithet, feeling that one was justified and the
other not unreasonable. She tried to avoid even the
suspicion of satire in her replies. But Harriet was sure
that she was satirical because she was so calm. She got
more and more violent, and Philip at one time feared that
she would come to blows.
"Look here!" he cried, with something of the old manner,
"it's too hot for this.
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