‘Of course,’ said Hermione, lifting her face like a rhapsodist, ‘there CAN be no reason, no EXCUSE for education, except the joy and beauty of knowledge in itself.’ She seemed to rumble and ruminate with subterranean thoughts for a minute, then she proceeded: ‘Vocational education ISN’T education, it is the close of education.’

Gerald, on the brink of discussion, sniffed the air with delight and prepared for action.

‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘But isn’t education really like gymnastics, isn’t the end of education the production of a well–trained, vigorous, energetic mind?’

‘Just as athletics produce a healthy body, ready for anything,’ cried Miss Bradley, in hearty accord.

Gudrun looked at her in silent loathing.

‘Well—’ rumbled Hermione, ‘I don’t know. To me the pleasure of knowing is so great, so WONDERFUL—nothing has meant so much to me in all life, as certain knowledge—no, I am sure—nothing.’

‘What knowledge, for example, Hermione?’ asked Alexander.

Hermione lifted her face and rumbled—

‘M—m—m—I don’t know . . . But one thing was the stars, when I really understood something about the stars. One feels so UPLIFTED, so UNBOUNDED . . .’

Birkin looked at her in a white fury.

‘What do you want to feel unbounded for?’ he said sarcastically. ‘You don’t want to BE unbounded.’

Hermione recoiled in offence.

‘Yes, but one does have that limitless feeling,’ said Gerald. ‘It’s like getting on top of the mountain and seeing the Pacific.’

‘Silent upon a peak in Dariayn,’ murmured the Italian, lifting her face for a moment from her book.

‘Not necessarily in Dariayn,’ said Gerald, while Ursula began to laugh.

Hermione waited for the dust to settle, and then she said, untouched:

‘Yes, it is the greatest thing in life—to KNOW. It is really to be happy, to be FREE.’

‘Knowledge is, of course, liberty,’ said Mattheson.

‘In compressed tabloids,’ said Birkin, looking at the dry, stiff little body of the Baronet. Immediately Gudrun saw the famous sociologist as a flat bottle, containing tabloids of compressed liberty. That pleased her. Sir Joshua was labelled and placed forever in her mind.

‘What does that mean, Rupert?’ sang Hermione, in a calm snub.

‘You can only have knowledge, strictly,’ he replied, ‘of things concluded, in the past. It’s like bottling the liberty of last summer in the bottled gooseberries.’

‘CAN one have knowledge only of the past?’ asked the Baronet, pointedly. ‘Could we call our knowledge of the laws of gravitation for instance, knowledge of the past?’

‘Yes,’ said Birkin.

‘There is a most beautiful thing in my book,’ suddenly piped the little Italian woman. ‘It says the man came to the door and threw his eyes down the street.’