“I don’t think you ought to do things you can’t explain,” said Clowes.
“Then you are wiping out Michael Angelo, and El Greco, and Blake, and Piero.”
“Yes,” said Mendel. “You are wiping out inspiration altogether.”
“Oh! if you think you are inspired I have nothing more to say,” replied Clowes rather tartly. She had felt instinctively that Mendel and Morrison would meet at the gallery, and was annoyed all the same that it had happened. She knew how they were regarded, and she herself did not approve. Morrison knew how impossible it was, and Clowes thought she ought not to allow it to go on.
Clowes also recognized how completely she was out of it, and she made excuses and left them.
“You are the only one who likes it,” he said.
“I don’t like it, but I know that it isn’t bad. It isn’t good either, but it is real and it is you.”
“I want no more than that,” he said, “from you.”
In his mind he had prepared all sorts of reproaches for his meeting with her, but they fell away from his lips. He could only accept that it was good and sweet and natural to be with her.