“We are both of us enchanted, Maurice.” And Iris smiled. Her lips looked very red, silken red. “Very good, very good! Well, you go to-morrow. That’s fixed. But I just wanted to show you us, Iris. I think you have forgotten us on your travels. You are of us. I think you have forgotten that. And you are stabbing us in the back. I’m not talking of Napier now as my son, my only son. Am I, Guy? Hilary? I’ve taken great pride in the boy’s career, I haven’t married again for his sake--but let all that go. I’m talking of Napier now just as one of us here, the us that you belong to, of the England that we stand for. We, Iris--you and us--we aren’t made only of flesh-and-blood. There’s a little devil of slackness who stands waiting for any of us who thinks he or she is only made of flesh-and-blood. We are made of air, too--this air, Iris, that we are breathing now. We are made of this air, you and us. We were born in it, our fathers and mothers were born in it. Guy, Hilary, I, you, Napier, we were all of us born within a hundred miles of this room, Guy at Mace, Hilary at Magralt, Napier and I here at Sutton Marie, and you not two miles away across the fields. We are of this soil, Iris, of this air, of this England which is still our England. My God, we haven’t much left, but we still have this. That is all I have to say, Iris. I just wanted to show you us, because I thought you must have forgotten us. You have decided, Iris, that you will break into our lives, and break up our lives. Why, Iris? What sort of hell is your ambition in the next world? Tell me that.” “No, Maurice!” said Hilary sharply. “Keep to this world.” Cold as stones were Iris’s eyes on Sir Maurice. She hated him beyond words or looks. “Don’t let’s talk of hell, Maurice,” she whispered. “It would shock even you if I were to tell you how much I know about it. I am leaving hell behind at last. And do you know, Maurice, that hell looks at me with your face? But I am leaving it behind now.” “Listen, Iris. Just this one question.” Those clever, darting eyes were curiously, strangely kind. I could not understand Sir Maurice. It was as though he loved, feared, hated, indulged, Iris. He waved the black ebony paper-knife at her. “Now I am a man of the world, Iris. Unlike Napier, as you know. And what sort of a woman are you? Tell me that. I have known many bad women. I have liked some. I have liked you, Iris. You know that. But this isn’t badness. Damn it, girl, this is evil! There aren’t any words in English to describe what we think of a woman who comes wantonly between a man and his wife, a man and his career. I’m not saying anything of your having come between Napier and me. He looked at me this morning as though he hated me. But leave me out. You are smashing a man’s career and you have stolen a man from his wife. What sort of a woman are you, Iris? Tell us that.”