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... and negro ladies in white muslin gowns.

Don’t you see it’s entirely the fault of the conjunction ‘and’? Try it this way. Oranges, churches, cabriolets, negro ladies in white muslin gowns.... It immediately becomes as significant and decorative as Manet’s negro lady is a white muslin gown in the Louvre—the one offering a bouquet to Olympia.”

He paused, and looked at her a little sheepishly, a smile lurking in the corner of his eyes.

“You’re too ridiculous,” laughed Teresa, “and theories about literature, you know, are rather dangerous, and allow me to point out that all the things that ... well, that one perhaps regrets in poor Wordsworth, whom you despise so much, that all these things are the result of his main theory, namely, that everything is equally interesting and equally poetic. While the other things—the incomparable things—happened in spite of his theories.”

“Oh, yes ... trudging over the moors through the rain, and he’s sniffing because he’s lost his handkerchief, and he’s thinking of tea—sent him by that chap in India or China, what was his name? You know ... the friend of Lamb’s—and of hot tea cakes.”