‘What fruit, Rupert?’

‘The eternal apple,’ he replied in exasperation, hating his own metaphors.

‘Yes,’ she said. There was a look of exhaustion about her. For some moments there was silence. Then, pulling herself together with a convulsed movement, Hermione resumed, in a sing-song, casual voice:

‘But leaving me apart, Rupert; do you think the children are better, richer, happier, for all this knowledge; do you really think they are? Or is it better to leave them untouched, spontaneous. Hadn’t they better be animals, simple animals, crude, violent, ANYTHING, rather than this self-consciousness, this incapacity to be spontaneous.’

They thought she had finished. But with a queer rumbling in her throat she resumed,