"Ah my darling, what you observe—!" Nick cried with a certain bitterness of amusement. But he added the next moment more seriously, as if his tone had been disrespectful: "You probe me to the bottom, no doubt."
"You needn't come either to Griffin or to Severals if you don't want to."
"Give them up yourself; stay here with me!"
She coloured quickly as he said this, and broke out: "Lord, how you hate political houses!"
"How can you say that when from February to August I spend every blessed night in one?"
"Yes, and hate that worst of all."
"So do half the people who are in it. You, my dear, must have so many things, so many people, so much mise-en-scène and such a perpetual spectacle to live," Nick went on. "Perpetual motion, perpetual visits, perpetual crowds! If you go into the country you'll see forty people every day and be mixed up with them all day. The idea of a quiet fortnight in town, when by a happy if idiotic superstition everybody goes out of it, disconcerts and frightens you. It's the very time, it's the very place, to do a little work and possess one's soul."
This vehement allocution found her evidently somewhat unprepared; but she was sagacious enough, instead of attempting for the moment a general rejoinder, to seize on a single phrase and say: "Work? What work can you do in London at such a moment as this?"
Nick considered. "I might tell you I want to get up a lot of subjects, to sit at home and read blue-books; but that wouldn't be quite what I mean."
"Do you mean you want to paint?"