"Hang consistency! I don't want you addled. And you'll get addled if you topple all these different stuffs into your little head together."
"But I'd rather be addled than empty."
"Nonsense! If I could I'd stop your doing anything that may alter you a hairbreadth from what you are at this moment."
To that she remarked, suspending her paddle in mid air, her face as sparkling as the shining drops that flashed from it, that she really was greatly enjoying herself; and they both laughed.
Ingram waited in the parlour, where he stood taking in with attentive eyes the details of that neglected, almost snubbed little room, while Ingeborg went to the laboratory, so happy and proud that she forgot she was breaking rules, to fetch, as she said, Robert.
Robert, however, would not be fetched. He looked up at her with a great reproach on her entrance, for as invariably happened on the rare occasions when the tremendousness of what she had to say seemed to her to justify interrupting, he thought he had just arrived within reach, after an infinite patient stalking, of the coy, illusive heart of the problem.
"Mr. Ingram's here," she said breathlessly.
He gazed at her over his spectacles.
"In the parlour," said Ingeborg. "He's come to tea. Isn't it wonderful? He's going to paint—"
"Who is here, Ingeborg?"