"Think of words compared
with sounds!" she continued. "Think of novels and plays and histories--"
Perched on the edge of the table, she stirred the red and yellow volumes
contemptuously. She seemed to herself to be in a position where she
could despise all human learning. Terence looked at them too.
"God, Rachel, you do read trash!" he exclaimed. "And you're behind
the times too, my dear. No one dreams of reading this kind of thing
now--antiquated problem plays, harrowing descriptions of life in the
east end--oh, no, we've exploded all that. Read poetry, Rachel, poetry,
poetry, poetry!"
Picking up one of the books, he began to read aloud, his intention being
to satirise the short sharp bark of the writer's English; but she paid
no attention, and after an interval of meditation exclaimed:
"Does it ever seem to you, Terence, that the world is composed entirely
of vast blocks of matter, and that we're nothing but patches of light--"
she looked at the soft spots of sun wavering over the carpet and up the
wall--"like that?"
"No," said Terence, "I feel solid; immensely solid; the legs of my chair
might be rooted in the bowels of the earth. But at Cambridge, I can
remember, there were times when one fell into ridiculous states
of semi-coma about five o'clock in the morning. Hirst does now, I
expect--oh, no, Hirst wouldn't."
Rachel continued, "The day your note came, asking us to go on the
picnic, I was sitting where you're sitting now, thinking that; I wonder
if I could think that again? I wonder if the world's changed? and if so,
when it'll stop changing, and which is the real world?"
"When I first saw you," he began, "I thought you were like a creature
who'd lived all its life among pearls and old bones.
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