"Because you must destroy and torment and wear out—that's your nature. But you can't help your type, can you?"
"My type?" she echoed.
"It's bad, perverse, dangerous. It's essentially insolent."
"And pray what's yours when you talk like that? Would you say such things if you didn't know the depths of my good nature?"
"Your good nature all comes back to that," said Sherringham. "It's an abyss of ruin—for others. You've no respect. I'm speaking of the artistic character—in the direction and in the plentitude in which you have it. It's unscrupulous, nervous, capricious, wanton."
"I don't know about respect. One can be good," Miriam mused and reasoned.
"It doesn't matter so long as one's powerful," he returned. "We can't have everything, and surely we ought to understand that we must pay for things. A splendid organisation for a special end, like yours, is so rare and rich and fine that we oughtn't to grudge it its conditions."
"What do you call its conditions?" Miriam asked as she turned and looked at him.
"Oh the need to take its ease, to take up space, to make itself at home in the world, to square its elbows and knock, others about. That's large and free; it's the good nature you speak of. You must forage and ravage and leave a track behind you; you must live upon the country you traverse. And you give such delight that, after all, you're welcome—you're infinitely welcome!"
"I don't know what you mean. I only care for the idea," the girl said.