human
Quite a small place, Miss Wilson, said 'Dolly.'
gpt
Full of people!
human
I suppose it is,
gpt
I tried to understand things once--to grasp them in the large, you know. Seems easy to some people, but I couldn't do it. I teach history. I was a bit overworked; some of my friends subscribed to send me out here for just a fortnight. Doing me good.
human
Are you going to grasp things in the large when you get back?
gpt
No, no; I'm afraid not. Thirty thousand or so of them down there, I suppose! All thinking they're very important. All being born, or dying, or love-making, or starving, or filling their bellies, and so on. Quite a small place!
human
Yes, I dare say. It sounds true, but rather trite. I have problems of my own, Mr. Wigram.
gpt
So have I--income, and taxation, and necessary expenditure. Still, these thirty thousand are interesting.
human
They're awfully lucky to want very few clothes and hardly any fires, and to live in such a beautiful place. What do you mean by things in the large, Mr. Wigram?
gpt
Well, I mean truth, said the absurd little man, clutching the balcony railings, just as if he were going to vault over them and crack his skull on the nut-shaped stones which served for a path thirty or forty feet beneath.
human
Truth is things in the large, you know.
gpt
I don't think I know that, but I know a friend in England who talks rather like you.
human
Poor devil! How much money does he make?
gpt
He's got independent means, Mr. Wigram.
human
Then he can afford to talk a great deal better.
gpt
You really make me rather uncomfortable. Surely everybody can say what they like nowadays?
human
I teach history in a school, and get a hundred and fifty pounds a year for it. Can I say what I like? Do I tell the truth about the history? Oh dear, no!
gpt
I've got just a hundred and fifty pounds a year. Can I do what I like?
human
It seems to me, he observed,
gpt
Not a soul,
human
I've a mother and an unmarried sister. You see the difference? I think I heard the gong. Good evening.
gpt
Good evening, Mr. Wigram.
human
As long as my own conscience is clear, it's no affair of yours what I did before I knew you, and I shan't say a word about it. She could certainly have followed Stephen's atavistic 'public-school' idea of honour with perfect readiness. These were both, in their different ways, forms of defiance. But Mrs. Lenoir's compromise--
gpt
I'll wait till the truth can't hurt me, though it may hurt you