“Well?” he challenged her.
“Oh, I hate ugliness so. It’s like pain. Is it very weak of me to hate ugliness?” she begged.
“It’s very natural, and no doubt weak.”
“I wouldn’t mind the thought of poverty so much—not hunger, nor thirst, nor cold—but dirt and hideousness—they are too terrible.”
“This is life in the raw. You like it dressed for Fifth Avenue better,” he taunted.
“Do you prefer this?”
“Infinitely.”
She looked about again, with a sense of having missed his point.
“Because it’s fight, hand-to-throat fight?”
“Yes. You can teach these people. They don’t know anything. They are dumb beasts. You can give them tongue. It’s too late to teach your Upper End.”
A woman passed close, with a baby, covered with great sores. Bambi caught at Jarvis’s sleeve and tottered a step.
“I feel a little sick,” she faltered.
He caught her hand through his arm, and hurried her quickly back the way they had come. As they mounted the stage, he looked at her white face.
