Elizabeth and George were very young and hence, on _a priori_ grounds, extremely intelligent. Probably the highest intensity of life ever reached by man or woman is in the early stages of their first real love affair, particularly if it is not thwarted by insane social and religious prejudices inherited from the timid and envious aged, and not contaminated by marriage. They emerged from the stuffy smoke-heavy room into the broad avenue, and walked towards Notting Hill tube station. A warm southwesterly wind was blowing, moisture-laden, the kindly courier of Spring. Gone was the raw acrid damp of Winter, and they imagined they could taste in the air the faint salt flavour of southern seas and the earthy English acres. “We shall have rain to-morrow,” said George, instinctively looking up at the cloudy sky invisible beyond the glare of street lamps. “It is Spring at last. The crocuses will be nearly over. I must go and look at the flowers at Hampton Court. Will you come?” “I’d love to, but isn’t Hampton Court full of trippers?” “Not if you go at the right time. I have walked there in the early morning as solitary as ever King Charles when the Privy Garden was really private. I should rather like to Jive in King William’s summer-house.” “I like wilder and more primitive country, the Downs and those great round empty Exmoor hills. And I like the clear rough waves dashing against the rocks in Cornwall.” “I don’t know Cornwall, but I love the Downs above Storrington and I’ve walked over Exmoor twice. But now I’m rather in revolt against mere country—‘Nature,’ as they used to call it. Nature-worship is a sort of Narcissus-worship, holding up Nature’s mirror to ourselves. And how abominably selfish these Nature-worshippers are I Why! they want a whole landscape to themselves and they complain bitterly when farm-labourers want modern grocery stores and W. C.’s. Whole communities apparently are to live in static ignorance and picturesque decay in order to gratify their false ideas of what is beautiful.” “Of course, I hate the Simple-Lifers too. There was a set of them near the place in the seaside where we went for the holidays as children....” “Oh! Have you got brothers and sisters?” “A sister and two brothers. Why, haven’t you?” “Yes, I believe so, but I never think about it. Relatives are awful—they contribute absolutely nothing to your interest in life, and think that gives them a perpetual right to interfere in your affairs. And they have the monstrous impudence to pretend that you ought to love them. ‘Blood is thicker than water,’ they say sententiously. So it may be, but I don’t want to dabble in thick blood. I hate proverbs, don’t you? I’ve always noticed that anything absurd or tyrannical or fatuous can always be supported by a proverb—the collective stupidity of the ages. But, I say, I’m so sorry I interrupted you. I go on talking and talking, and don’t give you a chance to say a word.”