Warming to the theme, she continued:
"Directly anything happens--it may be a marriage, or a birth, or a
death--on the whole they prefer it to be a death--every one wants to see
you. They insist upon seeing you. They've got nothing to say; they
don't care a rap for you; but you've got to go to lunch or to tea or to
dinner, and if you don't you're damned. It's the smell of blood," she
continued; "I don't blame 'em; only they shan't have mind if I know it!"
She looked about her as if she had called up a legion of human beings,
all hostile and all disagreeable, who encircled the table, with mouths
gaping for blood, and made it appear a little island of neutral country
in the midst of the enemy's country.
Her words roused her husband, who had been muttering rhythmically to
himself, surveying his guests and his food and his wife with eyes that
were now melancholy and now fierce, according to the fortunes of the
lady in his ballad. He cut Helen short with a protest. He hated even
the semblance of cynicism in women. "Nonsense, nonsense," he remarked
abruptly.
Terence and Rachel glanced at each other across the table, which
meant that when they were married they would not behave like that. The
entrance of Ridley into the conversation had a strange effect. It became
at once more formal and more polite. It would have been impossible to
talk quite easily of anything that came into their heads, and to say the
word prostitute as simply as any other word.
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