'Yes,' came Hermione's sauntering response. 'I think you can do away
with it.'

'I must say,' said Birkin, 'I detest the spirit of emulation.' Hermione
was biting a piece of bread, pulling it from between her teeth with her
fingers, in a slow, slightly derisive movement. She turned to Birkin.

'You do hate it, yes,' she said, intimate and gratified.

'Detest it,' he repeated.

'Yes,' she murmured, assured and satisfied.

'But,' Gerald insisted, 'you don't allow one man to take away his
neighbour's living, so why should you allow one nation to take away the
living from another nation?'

There was a long slow murmur from Hermione before she broke into
speech, saying with a laconic indifference:

'It is not always a question of possessions, is it? It is not all a
question of goods?'

Gerald was nettled by this implication of vulgar materialism.

'Yes, more or less,' he retorted. 'If I go and take a man's hat from
off his head, that hat becomes a symbol of that man's liberty. When he
fights me for his hat, he is fighting me for his liberty.'