He said: "You have so much, mother.... It seems strange you should not
be more generous to a girl you have never seen."
His handsome, capable, and experienced mother gazed at him out of
friendly and amused eyes from which delusion had long since fled. And
that is where she fell short, for delusion is the offspring of
imagination; and without imagination no intelligence is complete. She
said: "I can be generous with any woman except where my son concerns
himself with her. Where anybody else's son is involved I could be
generous to any girl, even--" she smiled her brilliant smile--"even
perhaps not too maliciously generous. But the situation in your case
doesn't appeal to me as humorous. Keep away from her, Clive; it's
easier than ultimately to run away from her."