Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/204

194 "Oh, my dear!" she said, and held out both hands to him.

She said no other word at all, and when he would have spoken, she laid her cool fingers on his mouth. And in that heavenly silence, he, poor fool! thought only how wonderful, how beyond compare with all other women she was. That was very near the truth, but it was not near the particular truth that he waa thinking about.

Then, after a moment or two, Lucia spoke again.

"Do you know, darling," she said, "I differ from you about the question of doing 'Salome' here, and if you are not busy, I should like to discuss it with you. But let us walk about: let us go down to the end of the garden and back; it gets a little chilly sitting down."

It was daring, and she knew it, to bring the conversation back at once to the subject on which they had so radically disagreed so little a while before. But she did it with intention; it was an admirable way of showing him how utterly she had expunged all that had passed from her mind to discuss at once a subject which had been the cause of bitter words.

He winced at her suggestion.

"Ah, no, no," he said. "I don't think I can."

Here was more opportunity.

"Oh, but really we had better," she said. "I am sure we shall not disagree if we only talk about it. Because my view is this, Edgar: it is such a mistake to think, to demand, that works of art should conform to any moral code. All art, if it is art, is indifferent to morals."

That was intentional, too; she purposely used the words that had stung to show there was no sting in them.

"And the odd thing about us," she said, "is that we don't demand morals from the classical plays, but only from modern ones. That is what the French mean by our English hypocrisy, I think, and they are quite right. What can be more intensely immoral than 'Othello'? Supposing you called Othello Mr. Jones, and Desdemona Mrs. Jones, and Iago the Honourable Desmond O'Brien, and laid the scene in Brixham, there is no question whatever that the censor would refuse to license the play, especially if it was written, not in blank verse, but in prose. Of course, we are quite right in our admiration for the play 'Othello,' but where we are quite wrong is in making a distinction between what is modern and what is ancient and classical. We are not shocked with the great Catherine of Russia, but if