He stopped in his quick pacing of the little room and stared at her. "Why, you're giving me trouble!" he said, in a voice of high astonishment.
And as she stood looking at him with her lips fallen apart, her eyes full of a new and anxious questioning, he began to pace about again, across and round and up and down the unworthy little room.
"God," he said, swiftly pacing, "how I do hate miss-ishness!"
And indeed it seemed to him wholly, amazingly monstrous that his great new work should be being held up a day by any scruples of any sort whatever.
"This grey headache of a sky," he said, jerking himself for a moment to the window, "this mud, this muggy chilliness—"
"But—" she began.
"The days here are lines—just length without breadth or thickness or any substance—"
"But surely—till to-day—"
"I feel in a sort of well in this place, out of sight of faith and kindliness—you shutting them out," he turned on her, "you deliberately shutting them out, putting the lid on the glory of light and life, being an extinguisher for the sake of nothing and nobody at all, just for the sake of a phantom of an idea about Robert—"
"But surely—" she said.