“Of course that reply would occur to a half-baked mind,” said Orestes. “Unless society were there with its standards and judgments, how would you know what is a good or a bad apple? Some like them greenish, some rather mellow.”

“You don’t mean that right and wrong are a matter of opinion!” said Hermione. “I side with mother. I think there is such a thing as a good apple. I wish we had one … Orestes! If right and wrong are a matter of opinion, then you weren’t absolutely right in—in what you did. You only thought you were!”

“I thought I was, and still think so,” said Orestes, “and the chief reason I think so is that I was following the opinion of the best society about revenge.”

“But not about filial duty,” said Hermione.

“You haven’t your mother’s good sense, nor her tact,” said Orestes. “I had to chose between two social duties, in a case where either choice would be wrong. It had to be, as I said, a matter of opinion.”

“If either choice would have been wrong, there may be something the matter with those social duties, don’t you think?”

“Hermione, what’s done is done, and you only add to my unhappiness by such questions. You should have talked this way beforehand, or not at all!”

“That’s mother’s idea,” said Hermione. “It does help, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t think it’s quite the same idea,” said Orestes. “I didn’t mean to quote your mother.”

“Try one of father’s biscuits,” said Hermione.

“Coming back to where we got off the subject,” said Orestes. “It’s the same way with beauty. Some people say that beauty is a positive thing, a kind of possession. You’ve noticed the remark about certain women, that they have great beauty. Of course that’s wrong. Beauty is simply an effect—the effect of extreme approval—a matter of opinion. When we are wiser we shall say that such women are beautiful, not that they have beauty, or better still, we’ll say they make the favourable impression called beauty.”

“Mother won’t mind,” said Hermione. “So long as she always creates the same impression, the gift will be absolute enough for her.”

“But does she always?” said Orestes. “I’ve met her only once, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said Hermione. “But the oftener you look at her, the more it will be so.”

“I’d like to see that for myself,” said Orestes. “But aren’t there buildings, and landscapes, and things, which always excite the same opinion in people, or so nearly always that you think there’s something peculiar about the people who don’t like them?”

“What if there are?”