Emily felt that the experience of conversing frankly with a live man was not exactly what she had anticipated. It certainly was in no way romantic. She felt baffled and a good deal chilled. The conversation had taken a horrid twist away from what she had intended.
"You think that women have no right to go out in the world then?" she said. "You don't sympathize with the modern trend?"
"I sympathize with nature and human nature," said Lorenzo, "but not with civilization." He rose to his feet.
"Oh, Mr. Rath!" she looked upward, expecting to be assisted to rise.
"I believe in life, lived by live things in the way God meant. I loathe this modern institution limping along with its burden of carefully fed and tended idiots and invalids and babies, better dead. I wish that I were a Zulu."
"Good Heavens!"
"Come," said the man, picking up his load, "we can go now."
"Had you finished?" She scrambled to her feet.
"I'd done all that I could under the circumstances."
"I suppose the light changes so fast at this time...." Emily was quite unsuspicious and content. The intuition that used to reign supreme in women was especially lacking in her. She had not the least idea of what her presence meant to the unhappy artist.