If one happens to know
Paris and London---
MRS. BARLOW. Paris and London! Well, I don't say you are all
together an adventuress. My husband seems very pleased with you--
for Winifred's sake, I suppose--and he's wrapped up in Winifred.
ANABEL. Winifred is an artist.
MRS. BARLOW. All my children have the artist in them. They get it
from my family. My father went mad in Rome. My family is born with
a black fate--they all inherit it.
OLIVER. I believe one is master of one's fate sometimes, Mrs. Barlow.
There are moments of pure choice.
MRS. BARLOW. Between two ways to the same end, no doubt. There's no
changing the end.
OLIVER. I think there is.
MRS. BARLOW. Yes, you have a _parvenu's_ presumptuousness somewhere
about you.
OLIVER. Well, better than a blue-blooded fatalism.
MRS. BARLOW. The fate is in the blood: you can't change the blood.
(Enter WINIFRED.)
WINIFRED. Oh, thank you, Oliver, for the wolf and the goat, thank
you so much!--The wolf has sprung on the goat, Miss Wrath, and has
her by the throat.
ANABEL. The wolf?
OLIVER. It's a little marble group--Italian--in hard marble.
WINIFRED. The wolf--I love the wolf--he pounces so beautifully.
His backbone is so terribly fierce. I don't feel a bit sorry for
the goat, somehow.
OLIVER. I didn't. She is too much like the wrong sort of clergyman.
WINIFRED.
Pages:
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51