"The better you hear a thing put, the more certain you are there's another view. And then there are _motives_." "Ah, now you're talking.... Motives; can be used. Almost any sort of motive can be roped in; and directed. You ought to write up that little meeting by the way. You're lucky you know, Miriam, in your opportunities for odd experience. Write it up. Don't forget." "You weren't there. It wasn't a joke. I don't want to be facetious about it." "You're too near. But you will. Save it up. You'll see all these little excursions in perspective when you're round the next corner." "Oh I _hate_ all these written up things; 'Jones always wore a battered cricket cap, a little askew.' They simply drive me _mad_. You know the whole thing is going to be lies from beginning to end." "You're a romantic, Miriam." "I'm not. It's the 'always wore.' Trying to get at you, just as much as 'Iseult the Fair.' Just as unreal, just as much in an assumed voice. The amazing thing is the way men go prosing on for ever and ever, admiring each other, never suspecting." "You've got to create an illusion you know." "Why illusion? Life isn't an illusion." "We don't know what life is. You don't know what life is. You think too much. Life's got to be lived. The difference between you and me is that you think to live and I live to think. You've made a jolly good start. Done things. Come out and got your economic independence. But you're stuck." "Now _there's_ somebody who's writing about life. Who's shown what has been going on from the beginning. Mrs. Stetson. It was the happiest day of my life when I read _Women and Economics_." "It's no good, you know, that idea of hers. Women have got to specialise. They are specialists from the beginning. They can't run families, and successful careers at the same time." "They could if life were differently arranged. They will. It's not that so much. Though it's a relief to know that homes won't be always a tangle of nerve-racking heavy industries which ought to be done by men. But the blaze of light she brings is by showing that women were social from the first and that _all_ history has been the gradual socialisation of the male. It is partly complete. But the male world is still savage." "The squaw, Miriam, was--" "Absolutely social and therefore civilised, compared to the hunting male. She went out of herself. Mother and son was society. _He_ had no chance. Everyone, even his own son, was an enemy and a rival." "That's old Ellis's idea. There's _been_ a matriarchate all right, Miriam, for your comfort." "I don't want comfort, I want truth." "Oh you _don't_, Miriam. One gives you facts and you slide away from them." * * * * * Household life breaks everything up. Comes crashing down on moments that cannot recur.... Thought runs on, below the surface to conclusions, arriving distractingly at the wrong moment.