"I don't know that I know the picture. Is it in Chicago?"
"It isn't painted!" Tietjens said. "But it's there!"
He continued with sudden fury:
"Damn it. What's the sense of all these attempts to justify fornication? England's mad about it. Well, you've got your John Stuart Mill's and your George Eliot's for the high-class thing. Leave the furniture out! Or leave me out at least. I tell you it revolts me to think of that obese, oily man who never took a bath, in a grease-spotted dressing-gown and the underclothes he's slept in, standing beside a five shilling model with crimped hair, or some Mrs. W. Three Stars, gazing into a mirror that reflects their fetid selves and gilt sunfish and drop chandeliers and plates sickening with cold bacon fat and gurgling about passion."
Macmaster had gone chalk white, his short beard bristling:
"You daren't . . . you daren't talk like that," he stuttered.
"I dare!" Tietjens answered; "but I oughtn't to . . . to you! I admit that. But you oughtn't, almost as much, to talk about that stuff to me, either. It's an insult to my intelligence."
"Certainly," Macmaster said stiffly, "the moment was not opportune."
"I don't understand what you mean," Tietjens answered. "The moment can never be opportune. Let's agree that making a career is a dirty business—for me as for you! But decent augurs grin behind their masks. They never preach to each other."
"You're getting esoteric," Macmaster said faintly.