of right
opinions.«
    »But by opinions you mean men's thoughts about great subjects, and by taste
you mean their thoughts about small ones; dress, behaviour, amusements,
ornaments.«
    »Well - yes - or rather, their sensibilities about those things.«
    »It comes to the same thing; thoughts, opinions, knowledge, are only a
sensibility to facts and ideas. If I understand a geometrical problem, it is
because I have a sensibility to the way in which lines and figures are related
to each other; and I want you to see that the creature who has the sensibilities
that you call taste, and not the sensibilities that you call opinions, is simply
a lower, pettier sort of being - an insect that notices the shaking of the
table, but never notices the thunder.«
    »Very well, I am an insect; yet I notice that you are thundering at me.«
    »No, you are not an insect. That is what exasperates me at your making a
boast of littleness. You have enough understanding to make it wicked that you
should add one more to the women who hinder men's lives from having any
nobleness in them.«
    Esther coloured deeply: she resented this speech, yet she disliked it less
than many Felix had addressed to her.
    »What is my horrible guilt?« she said, rising and standing, as she was wont,
with one foot on the fender, and looking at the fire. If it had been any one but
Felix who was near her, it might have occurred to her that this attitude showed
her to advantage; but she had only a mortified sense that he was quite
indifferent to what others praised her for.
    »Why do you read this mawkish stuff on a Sunday, for example?« he said,
snatching up Réné, and running his eye over the pages.
    »Why don't you always go to chapel, Mr Holt, and read Howe's Living Temple,
and join the church?«
    »There's just the difference between us - I know why I don't do those
things. I distinctly see that I can do something better. I have other
principles, and should sink myself by doing what I don't recognise as the best.«
    »I understand,« said Esther, as lightly as she could, to conceal her
bitterness. »I am a lower kind of being, and could not so easily sink myself.«
    »Not by entering into your father's ideas. If a woman really believes
herself to