"I will explain to you how it must be," said Mr. Powys to Emilia. "An
artistic people cannot hate long. Hotly for the time, but the oppression
gone, and even in the dream of its going, they are too human to be
revengeful."

"Do we understand such very deep things?" said Lady Gosstre, who was near
enough to hear clearly.

"Yes: for if I ask her whether she can hate when her mind is given to
music, she knows that she cannot. She can love."

"Yet I think I have heard some Italian operatic spitfires, and of some!"
said Lady Charlotte.

"What opinion do you pronounce in this controversy?" Cornelia made appeal
to Sir Twickenham.

"There are multitudes of cases," he began: and took up another end of his
statement: "It has been computed that five-and-twenty murders per month
to a population...to a population of ninety thousand souls, is a fair
reckoning in a Southern latitude."

"Then we must allow for the latitude?"

"I think so."

"And also for the space into which the ninety thousand souls are packed,"
quoth Tracy Runningbrook.