"I don't know very much," she said. "I
don't know them well at all, and of course I shouldn't criticize ..."
"Ah, child," broke in the actress, "there you mistake yourself. One must
always criticize. It is by the power of criticism and the courage of
criticism, that we have become different from the beasts."
"I don't know," said Rose, "except that some of them seem a little
dissatisfied and restless, as if--well, as if they wanted something they
haven't got."
"But do they truly want it?" Madame Greville demanded. "I am willing to
be convinced, but myself, I find of your women of the aristocrat class,
the type most characteristic is"--she paused and said the thing first
to herself in French, then translated--"is a passive epicure in
sensations; sensations mostly mental, irritating or soothing--a pleasant
variety. She waits to be made to feel; she perpetually--tastes. One may
demand whether it is that their precocity has exhausted them before they
are ripe, or whether your Puritan strain survives to make all passion
reprehensible, or whether simply they have too many ideas to leave room
for anything else.
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