"Yes," she said. "Yes."

Just so he used to bring ideas to her; just so, with "Yes--yes," she
used to receive them.

But he went on. "Why, convention, you know, it's the most mysterious,
extraordinary thing. It's a code society has built up to protect itself
and to govern itself, and when you go into it it's the most marvellous
code that ever was invented. All sorts of things that the law doesn't
give, and couldn't give, our conventions shove in on us in the most
amazing way. And all probably originated by a lot of Mother Grundy-ish
old women, that's what's so extraordinary. You know, if all the greatest
legal minds of all the ages had laid themselves out to make a social
code they could never have got anywhere near the rules the people have
built up for themselves. And that's what I like, Nona--that's what I
think so interesting and the best thing in life: the things the people
do for themselves without any State interference. That's what I'd
encourage all I knew how if I were a politician--"

He broke off. "I say, aren't I the limit, gassing away like this? I
hardly ever get off nowadays and when I do!--Why don't you stop me?"

She made a little gesture deprecatory of his suggestion. "Because I like
to hear you. I like to watch your funny old face when you're on one of
your ideas. It gets red underneath, Marko, and the red slowly comes up.
Funny old face! Go on. I want to hear this because I'm going to disagree
with you, I think. I think conventions, most of them, are odious,
hateful, Marko. I hate them."

VIII

He had been strangely affected by the words of her interruptions: a
contraction in the throat,--a twitching about the eyes.... But he was
able, and glad that he was able to catch eagerly at her opinion.
"Yes, yes, I know, odious, hateful, and much more than that,
cruel--conventions can be as cruel, as cruel as hell. I was just coming
to that. But they're all absolutely rightly based, Nona. That's the
baffling and the maddening part of them. That's what interests me in
them. In their application they're often unutterably wrong, cruel,
hideously cruel and unjust, but when you examine them, even at their
cruellest, you can't help seeing that fundamentally they're absolutely
right and reasonable and necessary. Look, take quite a silly example.
There's a convention against going to church in any but your best
clothes. It's easy to conceive wrongness in the application of it. It's
easy to conceive a person