all this pulling to pieces, all this
knowledge?«
    »Would you rather, for yourself, know or not know, that the little red
flowers are there, putting out for the pollen?« he asked harshly. His voice was
brutal, scornful, cruel.
    Hermione remained with her face lifted up, abstracted. He hung silent in
irritation.
    »I don't know,« she replied, balancing mildly. »I don't know.«
    »But knowing is everything to you, it is all your life,« he broke out. She
slowly looked at him.
    »Is it?« she said.
    »To know, that is your all, that is your life - you have only this, this
knowledge,« he cried. »There is only one tree, there is only one fruit, in your
mouth.«
    Again she was some time silent.
    »Is there?« she said at last, with the same untouched calm. And then in a
tone of whimsical inquisitiveness: »What fruit Rupert?«
    »The eternal apple,« he replied in exasperation, hating his own metaphors.
    »Yes,« she said. There was a look of exhaustion about her. For some moments
there was silence. Then, pulling herself together with a convulsed movement,
Hermione resumed, in a sing-song, casual voice.
    »But leaving me apart, Rupert; do you think the children are better, richer,
happier, for all this knowledge; do you really think they are? Or is it better
to leave them untouched, spontaneous. Hadn't they better be animals, simple
animals, crude, violent, anything, rather than this self-consciousness, this
incapacity to be spontaneous.«
    They thought she had finished. But with a queer rumbling in her throat she
resumed, »Hadn't they better be anything than grow up crippled, crippled in
their souls, crippled in their feelings - so thrown back - so turned back on
themselves - incapable -« Hermione clenched her fist like one in a trance - »of
any spontaneous action, always deliberate, always burdened with choice, never
carried away.«
    Again they thought she had finished. But just as he was going to reply, she
resumed her queer rhapsody - »never carried away, out of themselves, always
conscious, always self-conscious, always aware of themselves. Isn't anything
better than this? Better be animals, mere animals with no mind at all, than
this, this nothingness -«
    »But do you think it is