"Damned obstructive classics. That's what all our books will be. But I'll give you Mrs. Poole. Mrs. Poole is a very wonderful lady. She's the unprecedented." "There you are. Then you must admit the Taylors." "I'm not so sure about your little Taylors. There's nothing to be said, you know, for just going about not doing things." "They _are_ wonderful. Their atmosphere is the freest I know." "I envy you your enthusiasms, Miriam. Even your misplaced enthusiasms." "You go there, worn out, at the end of the day, and have to walk, after a long tram-ride through the wrong part of London, along raw new roads, dark little houses on either side, solid, without a single break, darkness, a street-lamp, more darkness, another lamp; and something in the air that lets you down and down. Partly the thought of these streets increasing, all the time, all over London. Yet when someone said walking home after a good evening at the Taylors' that the thought of having to settle down in one of those houses made him feel suicidal, I felt he was wrong; and saw them, from inside, bright and big; people's homes." "They're not big, Miriam. You wanted to marry him." "Good Heavens. An Adam's apple, sloping shoulders and a Cockney accent." "_I_ have a Cockney accent, Miriam." "..." "Don't go about classifying with your ears. People, you know, are very much alike." "They're utterly different." "Your vanity. Go on with your Taylors." "They are very much like other people." "With _my_ Taylors. I'm interested; really." "Well, suddenly you are in their kitchen. White walls and aluminium and a smell of fruit. Do you know the smell of root vegetables cooking slowly in a casserole?" "I'll imagine it. Right. Where are the Taylors?" "You are all standing about. Happy and undisturbed. None of that feeling of darkness and strangeness and the need for a fresh beginning. Tranquillity. As if someone had gone away." "The devil; exorcised, poor dear." "No but glorious. Making everyone move like a song. And talk. You are all, at once, bursting with talk. All over the flat, in and out of the rooms. George washing up all the time, wandering about with a dish and a cloth and Dora probably doing her hair in a dressing-gown, and cooking. It's the only place where I can talk exhausted and starving." "What do you talk about?" "Everything. We find ourselves sitting in the bathroom, engrossed--long speeches--they talk to each other, like strangers talking intimately on a 'bus. Then something boils over and we all drift back to the kitchen. Left to herself Dora would go on forever and sit down to a few walnuts at midnight." "Mary."