Beclere, _un membre de l'Institut_, talking to the beautiful girl
whom Owen had seen that morning! Owen smiled a little under his
moustache, and, as there was plenty of time for meditation while
waiting for Tahar to return from Ain Mahdy, he spent a great deal of
time wondering if any sensual relations existed between Beclere and
this girl. Beclere as a lover appeared to him anomalous and
disparate--that is how Beclere would word it himself, but these
pedants were very often serious sensualists. We easily associate
conventional morality with red-tapeism, for it seems impossible to
believe that the stodgy girl who spends her morning in the British
Museum working at the higher mathematics or Sanscrit is likely to
spend her afternoon in bed, yet this is what happens frequently; the
real sensualist is the pedant; "and, if one wants love, the real
genuine article," whispered a thought, "one must seek it among
clergymen's daughters."
That girl Beclere's mistress! Why not? The thought pleased and amused
him, reconciled him to Beclere, whom he never should have thought
capable of such fine discrimination. But it did not follow that
because Beclere had chosen a beautiful girl to love he was
susceptible to artistic influences, sculpture excepted.
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