I rather wish we did, you know. It's far more gentlemanly
than laying for a chap outside his club with a hunting-crop, and getting
summoned for assault at Vine Street. Not a bit more vicious, barring the
Ten Commandments."
"Prince Morosine doesn't believe in them," Sanchia said. "He's vowed to
abolish them."
"So he may tell you, my dear. Don't you believe it. So long as they are
good form they will be Alexis' form. He'd sooner die than covet his
neighbour's wife." She reserved this for consideration. Meantime, she saw
more of Morosine than of any other man, and got through January very well
by his help.
She particularly liked his company in galleries, because, though he never
allowed himself raptures--of which she, too, was incapable--he was always
seeking the roots of rapture. Sanchia had a fund of enthusiasm for art all
the richer, perhaps, for being denied expression. It was comfortable to
have that securely based.
"Do you ever consider," he asked her once, when they stood before the
great group of the Pediment, "why it is that these things are so
beautiful; why, although they are bare of colour and all that stands for
life to us in art, they are more than life? It's because they point to a
state of being exquisitely conform to the laws of being.
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