Again Hermione made a pause, domineering and cold, before she replied: `Yes, I think it is always wrong to provoke a spirit of rivalry. It makes bad blood. And bad blood accumulates.'

`But you can't do away with the spirit of emulation altogether?' said Gerald. `It is one of the necessary incentives to production and improvement.'

`Yes,' came Hermione's sauntering response. `I think you can do away with it.'

`I must say,' said Birkin, `I detest the spirit of emulation.' Hermione was biting a piece of bread, pulling it from between her teeth with her fingers, in a slow, slightly derisive movement. She turned to Birkin.

`You do hate it, yes,' she said, intimate and gratified.

`Detest it,' he repeated.

`Yes,' she murmured, assured and satisfied.

`But,' Gerald insisted, `you don't allow one man to take away his neighbour's living, so why should you allow one nation to take away the living from another nation?'

There was a long slow murmur from Hermione before she broke into speech, saying with a laconic indifference:

`It is not always a question of possessions, is it? It is not all a question of goods?'

Gerald was nettled by this implication of vulgar materialism.

`Yes, more or less,' he retorted. `If I go and take a man's hat from off his head, that hat becomes a symbol of that man's liberty. When he fights me for his hat, he is fighting me for his liberty.'

Hermione was nonplussed.

`Yes,' she said, irritated. `But that way of arguing by imaginary instances is not supposed to be genuine, is it? A man does not come and take my hat from off my head, does he?'

`Only because the law prevents him,' said Gerald.

`Not only,' said Birkin. `Ninety-nine men out of a hundred don't want my hat.'

`That's a matter of opinion,' said Gerald.

`Or the hat,' laughed the bridegroom.

`And if he does want my hat, such as it is,' said Birkin, `why, surely it is open to me to decide, which is a greater loss to me, my hat, or my liberty as a free and indifferent man. If I am compelled to offer fight, I lose the latter. It is a question which is worth more to me, my pleasant liberty of conduct, or my hat.'

`Yes,' said Hermione, watching Birkin strangely. `Yes.'

`But would you let somebody come and snatch your hat off your head?' the bride asked of Hermione.

The face of the tall straight woman turned slowly and as if drugged to this new speaker.

`No,' she replied, in a low inhuman tone, that seemed to contain a chuckle. `No, I shouldn't let anybody take my hat off my head.'

`How would you prevent it?' asked Gerald.