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Walpole, Hugh, Sir, 1884-1941

"The Captives"

I can't imagine why any one writes
books now when there are so many already in existence that nobody's
read."
He wasn't listening to her. He looked up suddenly and said quite
wildly:
"It's terrible all this that's going on. You know about it, of
course--Warlock's visions I mean and the trouble it's making. I'm
outside it and you're outside it, but we're being brought into it
all the same--how can we help it when we love the people who are in
it? It's so easy to say that it's nonsense, that people ought to be
wiser nowadays; that it's hysteria, even insanity--I know all that
and, of course, I don't believe for a moment that God's coming in a
chariot of fire on New Year's Eve especially for the benefit of
Thurston, Miss Avies and the rest, but that doesn't end it--it ought
to end it, but it doesn't. There's more in some people's madness
than in other people's sanity, and anyway, even if it's all nonsense
it means life or death to your aunt and some of the others, and it
means a certain breaking up of all this place. And it probably means
the triumph of a charlatan like Thurston and the increase of humbug
in the world and the discouragement of all the honest adventurers.


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