So there you have the pretty picture. Mind, I am
not preaching anything contrary to accepted morality. I am not
advocating free love in this or any other case. Society must go on, I
suppose, and society can only exist if the normal, if the virtuous,
and the slightly deceitful flourish, and if the passionate, the
headstrong, and the too-truthful are condemned to suicide and to
madness. But I guess that I myself, in my fainter way, come into
the category of the passionate, of the headstrong, and the
too-truthful. For I can't conceal from myself the fact that I loved
Edward Ashburnham--and that I love him because he was just
myself. If I had had the courage and virility and possibly also the
physique of Edward Ashburnham I should, I fancy, have done
much what he did. He seems to me like a large elder brother who
took me out on several excursions and did many dashing things
whilst I just watched him robbing the orchards, from a distance.
And, you see, I am just as much of a sentimentalist as he was. . . .
Yes, society must go on; it must breed, like rabbits. That is what
we are here for. But then, I don't like society--much. I am that
absurd figure, an American millionaire, who has bought one of the
ancient haunts of English peace.
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