"_Which_ passage, Miriametta?" The effort of throwing off the many distractions of the interested, mocking, critical voice. "You weaken the whole argument by coming forward in those three words to tell your readers what they ought to feel. An _enormous_ amount of time is lost, while attention is turned from the spectacle to yourself." "Yes. _Which_ passage?" "In the moment that the reader turns away, everything goes, and they come back distracted and different, having been racing all over their own world, perhaps _indifferent_." "Passage, passage----" "The _real_ truth is that you don't feel that pathos to yourself, or not in that way and in those words ... there are one or two earlier passages that stopped me, the same sort of thing." "Right. We'll have'm all out." "Without them the book will convince everybody." "No sane person can read it and keep out of socialism." "No." But how fearful that sounds said by the author. As if he knew something else as well. "Y'know _you_ ought to be a Lycurgan, Miriam." And then had come the sense of the door closing on all past loneliness, the rich sense of being carried forward to some new accompanied moulding change; but without any desire to go. Even with him, a moment of expression, seeming, while it lasted, enough in itself; the whole of life, when it happened not alone, but in an understanding presence; led to _results_, the destructive demand for the pinning of it down to some small shape of specialised action. Could he not see that the thing so surprising her and coming to him also as a surprise, was enough in itself ... would disappear if she rushed forward into activities, masquerading, with empty hands, as one who had something to give. Yet _he_ was going forward into activities.... She ought, having learned from him a clear theory of the working of the whole of human life, to be willing to follow, only too glad of the opportunity of any sort of share, even as an onlooker in the making of the new world. But if she responded, she would be supporting his wrong estimate of her, his way of endowing everyone with his own gifts, seeing people only as capability, waiting for opportunities for action. She wanted only further opportunities with him, of forgetfulness, and the strange following moments of expression. "Everyone will be socialists soon; there's no need to join societies." "There's mountains, my dear Miriam, _mountains_ of work ahead, that only an organised society can compass. And you'd like the Lycurgans. We'll make you a Lycurgan." "What could I do?" "You can talk. You might write. Edit. You've got a deadly critical eye. Yes, you are a Lycurgan. That's settled." "How _can_ you say I can talk?" "You've got a _tenacity_. I'd back you against anyone in argument, when you're roused." "Argument is no good to anybody, world without end, amen." "Don't be frivolous, Miriam. Real argument's a fine clean weapon." "Cutting both ways; proving _anything_." "Quarrelsome Miriam."