“Doesn’t all this make you feel that it is a city of slaves?” “That depends, perhaps, on one’s digestion.” “But does it? These people are slaves, without knowing it. Things are thrust on them, and they think they choose.” “Nothing but suggestion, after all.” “Look, I will show you.” Eve stopped in front of a picture shop. “What’s your opinion of all that is in there?” “Hopeless, sentimental tosh, of course. But it suits the people.” “It is what is given them, and they take it. There is not one thing in that window that has any glimmer of genius, or even of distinction.” “What do you expect in Islington?” “I call it catering for slaves, and that worst sort of slavery that does not realise its own condition.” They walked on and passed a bookshop. Eve turned back. “Look again!” Kate Duveen laughed. “I suppose, for instance, that annoys you?” She pointed to a row of a dozen copies of a very popular novel written by a woman, and called “The Renunciation.” “It does annoy me.” “That toshy people rave over tosh! A friend of mine knows the authoress. She is a dowdy little bourgeoise who lives in a country town, and they tell me that book has made her ten thousand pounds. She thinks she has a mission, and that she is a second George Eliot.” “Doesn’t it annoy you?” “Why should it? Fools’ money for a fool’s tale. What do you expect? I suppose donkeys think that there is nothing on earth like a donkey’s braying!” “All the same, it helps my argument, that these people are slaves, only capable of swallowing just what is given them.” “I dare say you are right. We ought to change a lot of this in the next fifty years!” “I wonder. You see, he taught me a good deal, in the country, about growth and evolution, and all that has come from the work of Mendel, De Vries and Bates. He doesn’t believe in London. He called it an orchid house, and said he preferred a few wholesome and indigenous weeds.” “All the more reason for believing that this sort of London won’t last. We shall get something better.” “We may do, if we can get rid of some of the politicians.”