In any European country this would be out of the question;
but it is not so there, for the straighteners are constantly ordering
people to be flogged, so that they are familiar with the notion. I do
not suppose that the idea will be ever acted upon; but its having been
even mooted is enough to show the utter perversion of the Erewhonian
mind.
CHAPTER XXI: THE COLLEGES OF UNREASON
I had now been a visitor with the Nosnibors for some five or six months,
and though I had frequently proposed to leave them and take apartments of
my own, they would not hear of my doing so. I suppose they thought I
should be more likely to fall in love with Zulora if I remained, but it
was my affection for Arowhena that kept me.
During all this time both Arowhena and myself had been dreaming, and
drifting towards an avowed attachment, but had not dared to face the real
difficulties of the position. Gradually, however, matters came to a
crisis in spite of ourselves, and we got to see the true state of the
case, all too clearly.
One evening we were sitting in the garden, and I had been trying in every
stupid roundabout way to get her to say that she should be at any rate
sorry for a man, if he really loved a woman who would not marry him.
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