Miriam rose unable to look; wishing she had come alone; or had not spoken. The green vistas moved all about her, dazzling under the height of sky. “I’m perfectly sure I shall always feel the spring; perhaps more and more.” She escaped into irrelevant speech, hurrying along so that he should hear incompletely until she had firm hold of some far-off topic; dreading the sound of his voice.
The flowerbeds were in sight, gleaming in the gaps between the tree trunks along the broad walk … ragged children were shouting and chasing each other round the fountain. “I must always here think,” he said as they passed through the wicket gate “of this man who preaches for the conversion of infidels, Jews, Christians, and other unbelievers.”
She hurried on preparing to face the rows of Saturday afternoon people on the chairs and seats along the avenue, their suspicious English eyes on her scrappy, dowdy, out-of-date English self and her extraordinary looking foreigner. Her spirits lifted. But they must be walking quickly and talking. The staring self-revealing faces must see that it was a privilege to have converse with anyone so utterly strange and far away from their English life.
“I’m not interested in him,” she said as they got into their stride.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know why. I can’t fix my thoughts on him; or any of these people who yell at crowds.” Not quite that; but it made a sentence and fitted with their walk.
“It is perhaps that you are too individualistic,” panted Mr. Shatov. There was no opening in this for an appearance of easy conversation; the words were leaping and barking round her like dogs.
But she turned swiftly leading the way down a winding side path and demanding angrily as soon as they were alone how it was possible to be too individualistic.
“I agree to a certain extent that it is impossible. A man is first himself. But the peril is of being cut off from his fellow creatures.”
“Why peril? Men descend to meet. Are you a socialist? Do you believe in the opinions of mediocre majorities?”
“Why this adjective? Why mediocre? No, I would call myself rather one who believes in the race.”
“What race? The race is nothing without individuals.”
“What is an individual without the race?”
“An individual, with a consciousness; or a soul, whatever you like to call it. The race, apart from individuals is nothing at all.”
“You have introduced here several immense questions. There is the question as to whether a human being isolated from his fellows would retain any human characteristics. Your great Buckle has considered this in relation to the problem of heredity. But aside of this, has the race not a soul and an individuality? Greater than that of its single parts?”
“Certainly not. The biggest thing a race does is to produce a few big individualities.”
“The biggest thing that the race does is that it goes on. Individuals perish.”
“You don’t know that they do.”
“That is speculation; without evidence. I have the most complete evidence that the race survives.”
“It may die, according to science.”
“That also is a speculation. But what is certain is—that the greatest individual is great only as he gives much to the race; to his fellow creatures. Without this, individuality is pure-negative.”
“Individuality cannot be negative.”
“There speaks the Englishwoman. It is certainly England’s highest attainment that the rights of the individual are sacred here. But even this is not complete. It is still impeded by class prejudice.”
“I haven’t any class prejudice.”
“You are wrong; believe me you have immensely these prejudices. I could quite easily prove this to you. You are in many ways most exceptionally for an Englishwoman emancipated. But you are still pure-Tory.”
“That is only my stamp. I can’t help that. But I myself have no prejudices.”
“They are so far in you unconscious.” He spoke with extreme gentleness, and Miriam looked uneasily ahead, wondering whether with this strange knowledge at her side she might be passing forward to some fresh sense of things that would change the English world for her. English prejudices. He saw them as clearly as he saw that she was not beautiful. And gently, as if they were charming as well as funny to him. Their removal would come; through a painless association. For a while she would remain as she was. But even seeing England from his point of view, was being changed; a little. The past, up to the last few moments, was a life she had lived without knowing that it was a life lived in special circumstances and from certain points of view. Now, perhaps moving away from it, these circumstances and points of view suddenly became a possession, full of fascinating interest. But she had lived blissfully. Something here and there in his talk threatened happiness.
He seemed to see people only as members of nations, grouped together with all their circumstances. Perhaps everything could be explained in this way. … All her meaning for him was her English heredity, a thing he seemed to think the finest luck in the world, and her free English environment, the result of it; things she had known nothing about till he came, smiling at her ignorance of them, and declaring the ignorance to be the best testimony … that was it; he gave her her nationality and surroundings, the fact of being England to him made everything easy. There was no need to do or be anything, individual. It was too easy. It must be demoralising … just sitting there basking in being English. … Everything she did, everything that came to her in the outside world turned out to be demoralising … too easy … some fraud in it. … But the pity she found herself suddenly feeling for all English people who had not intelligent foreign friends gave her courage to go on. Meanwhile there was an unsettled troublesome point. Something that could not be left.
“Perhaps,” she said, “I daresay. But at any rate, I have an open mind. Do you think that the race is sacred, and has purposes, superman you
