as that about the first thing in the world, what does one know and
why is one here?

I asked Mrs Ashburnham whether she had told Florence that and
what Florence had said and she answered:--"Florence didn't offer
any comment at all. What could she say? There wasn't anything to
be said. With the grinding poverty we had to put up with to keep
up appearances, and the way the poverty came about--you know
what I mean--any woman would have been justified in taking a
lover and presents too. Florence once said about a very similar
position--she was a little too well-bred, too American, to talk about
mine--that it was a case of perfectly open riding and the woman
could just act on the spur of the moment. She said it in American
of course, but that was the sense of it. I think her actual words
were: 'That it was up to her to take it or leave it. . . .'"

I don't want you to think that I am writing Teddy Ashburnham
down a brute. I don't believe he was. God knows, perhaps all men
are like that. For as I've said what do I know even of the
smoking-room? Fellows come in and tell the most extraordinarily
gross stories--so gross that they will positively give you a pain.
And yet they'd be offended if you suggested that they weren't the
sort of person you could trust your wife alone with. And very
likely they'd be quite properly offended--that is if you can trust
anybody alone with anybody. But that sort of fellow obviously
takes more delight in listening to or in telling gross stories--more
delight than in anything else in the world. They'll hunt languidly
and dress languidly and dine languidly and work without
enthusiasm and find it a bore to carry on three minutes'
conversation about anything whatever and yet, when the other sort