He patted her shoulder and left her, and began walking up and down the room.
“Don’t!” said Enid, impatiently. “It shakes the floor.... Sit down and smoke.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Why don’t you work?”
“Still the school marm. You imagine you can ‘be an artist’ by sitting over your work all your life. You haven’t the wit to see that art is the outcome of experience——”
“No, it isn’t. Unless it’s your ancestors’ experience. It comes with you when you’re born. Art is the result of impressions——”
“And how do you get impressions, woman, except through experience?”
“Some people can get a vivid impression by looking at a blank wall. It’s inside, not outside. What you call experience is nothing but distractions, interruptions....”
“Young woman, what I call experience is experience. I’m not a timid female thing.”
Then he began to boast—of how he had lived, how he had felt, what he had seen. He swaggered amazingly, pacing up and down the room, stroking his little black mustache, continually fixing his monocle with a tremendous grimace. Rosaleen was lost in bewilderment. She couldn’t for the life of her tell whether he was joking or serious, whether his talk was brilliant or idiotic. She could get no clue from Miss Mell, for she was still working and apparently paying no heed. Enid’s face had its usual fierce and scornful look, her voice its usual impatient vigour. She longed to have this man interpreted.