g it means
keeping bounds, respecting implications, respecting implicit bounds. If
individuality means anything it means breaking bounds--adventure.

"Will you be moral and your species, or immoral and yourself? We've
decided to be immoral. We needn't try and give ourselves airs. We've
deserted the posts in which we found ourselves, cut our duties, exposed
ourselves to risks that may destroy any sort of social usefulness in
us.... I don't know. One keeps rules in order to be one's self. One
studies Nature in order not to be blindly ruled by her. There's no sense
in morality, I suppose, unless you are fundamentally immoral."

She watched his face as he traced his way through these speculative
thickets.

"Look at our affair," he went on, looking up at her. "No power on earth
will persuade me we're not two rather disreputable persons. You desert
your home; I throw up useful teaching, risk every hope in your career.
Here we are absconding, pretending to be what we are not; shady, to say
the least of it. It's not a bit of good pretending there's any Higher
Truth or wonderful principle in this business. There isn't. We never
started out in any high-browed manner to scandalize and Shelleyfy.
When first you left your home you had no idea that _I_ was the hidden
impulse. I wasn't. You came out like an ant for your nuptial flight. It
was just a chance that we in particular hit against each other--nothing
predestined about it. We just hit against each other, and here we are
flying off at a tangent, a little surprised at what we are doing, all
our principles abandoned, and tremendously and quite unreasonably proud
of ourselves. Out of all this we have struck a sort of harmony....
And it's gorgeous!"

"Glorious!" said Ann Veronica.

"Would YOU like us--if some one told you the bare outline of our
story?--and what we are doing?"

"I shouldn't mind," said Ann Veronica.

"But if some one else asked your advice? If some one else said, 'Here is
my teacher, a jaded married man on the verge of middle age, and he and I
have a violent passion for one another. We propose to disregard all our
ties, all our obligations, all the established prohibitions of society,
and begin life together afresh.' What would you tell her?"

"If she asked advice, I should say she wasn't fit to do anything of the
sort. I should say that having a doubt was enough to condemn it."

"But waive that point."

"It would be different all the same. It wouldn't