she cried. ‘It seems to me the reverse. They are overconscious, burdened to death with consciousness.’

‘Imprisoned within a limited, false set of concepts,’ he cried.

But she took no notice of this, only went on with her own rhapsodic interrogation.

‘When we have knowledge, don’t we lose everything but knowledge?’ she asked pathetically. ‘If I know about the flower, don’t I lose the flower and have only the knowledge? Aren’t we exchanging the substance for the shadow, aren’t we forfeiting life for this dead quality of knowledge? And what does it mean to me, after all? What does all this knowing mean to me? It means nothing.’

‘You are merely making words,’