“Perhaps you have seen him, Gwen, but not known him again. Guides are no good in these family relationships.” “I must say candidly that philosophy was too much for me. I can, as yet, only grasp what touches my heart. We shall talk much, think deeply, you and I, my dearest Ly.” “Not that name, dearest! It burns your sweet lips. It was the synthesis of the false life you and I lived.” “Then it shall be, Lion. My Lion will you be?” “Yes, your Lion, my beautiful Una.” “Tell me; why have you never loved? A man is free, and has every opportunity to choose; it is not like us women, who are told from infancy what we are worth and what kind of market the world is.” “Love did not enter into the programme of my school life, Gwen. Had love been part of education, I doubt whether our old world would have lasted as long as it did. It is because love has had no fair play for centuries that injustice, hypocrisy and tyranny have ruled unmolested. Love may be, in words, the principle by which all things are ordained, but hatred is the real password, and we are so accustomed to the clever trickery that we do not detect the fraud.” “But was not your father fond of you?” “He took me to Italy several times during my long vacations. I remember being taken by him to the Uffizi Gallery and being told to look at the pictures;—I used to stand transfixed in front of Raphael’s Madonnas. Then dad would turn up—too soon—with some Italian lady whom he had no doubt picked up—by appointment—and my dream was over.” “And your mother, Lion, was she pleased when you came home? You must have been such a dear boy!” “Home! Mother! I can hardly articulate the sacred words.” “Tell me about her; for of course I have only heard what the world had to say of her, of her reckless life and tragic death in the hunting-field; but I want you to tell me, for between us there can never be any secret, nor any subterfuge.”