had taken to affect a cosmopolitan naughtiness which he was far from possessing.
“Well,” said he, “I cannot help it if they do disapprove of me. There are certain irremovable barriers between myself and them, and I must accept them.”
“We all have our limitations, I suppose,” said wise Lucy.
“Sometimes they are forced on us, though,” said Cecil, who saw from her remark that she did not quite understand his position.
“How?”
“It makes a difference, doesn’t it, whether we fully fence ourselves in, or whether we are fenced out by the barriers of others?”
She thought a moment, and agreed that it did make a difference.
“Difference?” cried Mrs. Honeychurch, suddenly alert. “I don’t see any difference. Fences are fences, especially when they are in the same place.”
“We were speaking of motives,” said Cecil, on whom the interruption jarred.
“My dear Cecil, look here.” She spread out her knees and perched her card-case on her lap. “This is me. That’s Windy Corner. The rest of the pattern is the other people. Motives are all very well, but the fence comes here.”
“We weren’t talking of real fences,” said Lucy, laughing.
“Oh, I see, dear—poetry.”
She leant placidly back. Cecil wondered why Lucy had been amused.