Page:Orlando by Virginia Woolf.djvu/222

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ORLANDO

how despicable you are! Deformed and weakly, there is nothing to venerate in you, much to pity, most to despise."

Again they were in darkness and her anger became modified directly she could see nothing but the poet's knees. "But it is I that am a wretch," she reflected, once they were in complete obscurity again, "for base as you may be, am I not still baser? It is you who nourish and protect me, you who scare the wild beast, frighten the savage, make me clothes of the silk worm's wool, and carpets of the sheep's. If I want to worship have you not provided me with an image of yourself and set it in the sky? Are not evidences of your care everywhere? How humble, how grateful, how docile, should I not be, therefore? Let it be all my joy to serve, honour, and obey you."

Here they reached the big lamp post at the corner of what is now Piccadilly Circus. The light blazed in her eyes, and she saw, besides some degraded creatures of her own sex, two wretched pigmies on a stark desert land. Both were naked, solitary, and defenceless. The one was powerless to help the other. Each had enough to do to look after itself. Looking Mr. Pope full in the face, "It is equally vain," she thought, "for you to think you can protect me, or for me to think I can worship you. The

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