We are materialistic
because we haven't the power to be anything else--try as we may, we
can't bring off anything but materialism: mechanism, the very soul of
materialism.'
Ursula was subdued into angry silence. She did not heed what he said.
She was rebelling against something else.
'And I hate your past. I'm sick of it,' she cried. 'I believe I even
hate that old chair, though it IS beautiful. It isn't MY sort of
beauty. I wish it had been smashed up when its day was over, not left
to preach the beloved past to us. I'm sick of the beloved past.'
'Not so sick as I am of the accursed present,' he said.
'Yes, just the same. I hate the present--but I don't want the past to
take its place--I don't want that old chair.'
He was rather angry for a moment. Then he looked at the sky shining
beyond the tower of the public baths, and he seemed to get over it all.
He laughed.
'All right,' he said, 'then let us not have it. I'm sick of it all,
too. At any rate one can't go on living on the old bones of beauty.
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