is bad,” he said, shaking his head. “But then!” he added.—“What are my own children to me, but little monkeys? And their mother—and their mother—Ah, no! Señora Caterina! It is no good. One must be able to disentangle oneself from persons, from people. If I go to a rose-bush, to be intimate with it, it is a nasty thing that hurts me. One must disentangle oneself from persons and personalities, and see people as one sees the trees in the landscape. People in some way dominate you. In some way, humanity dominates your consciousness. So you must hate people and humanity, and you want to escape. But there is only one way of escape: to turn beyond them, to the greater life.”
“But I do!” cried Kate. “I do nothing else. When I was with Joachim absolutely alone in a cottage, doing all the work