Was it meant to be?" enquired Mrs. Plinth, who was fond of asking questions that she permitted no one but herself to answer. "Assuredly not."
"Assuredly not -- that is what I was going to say," assented Mrs. Leveret, hastily rolling up her opinion and reaching for another. "It was meant to -- to elevate."
Miss Van Vluyck adjusted her spectacles as though they were the black cap of condemnation. "I hardly see," she interposed, "how a book steeped in the bitterest pessimism can be said to elevate, however much it may instruct."
"I meant, of course, to instruct," said Mrs. Leveret, flurried by the unexpected distinction between two terms which she had supposed to be synonymous. Mrs. Leveret's enjoyment of the Lunch Club was frequently marred by such surprises; and not knowing her own value to the other ladies as a mirror for their mental complacency she was sometimes troubled by a doubt of her worthiness to join in their debates. It was only the fact of having a dull sister who thought her clever that saved her from a sense of hopeless inferiority.
"Do they get married in the end?" Mrs. Roby interposed.
"They -- who?" the Lunch Club collectively exclaimed.
"Why, the girl and man. It's a novel, isn't it? I always think that's the one thing that matters. If they're parted it spoils my dinner."
Mrs. Plinth and Mrs. Ballinger exchanged scandalised glances, and the latter said: "I should hardly advise you to read 'The Wings of Death,' in that spirit. For my part, when there are so many books that one has to read, I wonder how any one can find time for those that are merely amusing."
"The beautiful part of it," Laura Glyde murmured, "is surely just this -- that no one can tell how 'The Wings of Death' ends. Osric Dane, overcome by the dread significance of her own meaning, has mercifully veiled it -- perhaps even from herself -- as Apelles, in representing the sacrifice of Iphigenia, veiled the face of Agamemnon."
"What's that? Is it poetry?" whispered Mrs. Leveret nervously to Mrs. Plinth, who, disdaining a definite reply, said coldly: "You should look it up. I always make it a point to look things up." Her tone added --"though I might easily have it done for me by the footman."
"I was about to say," Miss Van Vluyck resumed, "that it must always be a question whether a book can instruct unless it elevates."
"Oh --" murmured Mrs. Leveret, now feeling herself hopelessly astray.
