"It's you yourself then, indignant and loyal, who are the martyr," observed Peter, who wanted greatly to be kind to her.
"Oh I don't care!"—but she threw herself, flushed and charming, into a straight appeal to him. "Don't you think one can do as much good by painting great works of art as by—as by what papa used to do? Don't you think art's necessary to the happiness, to the greatness of a people? Don't you think it's manly and honourable? Do you think a passion for it's a thing to be ashamed of? Don't you think the artist—the conscientious, the serious one—is as distinguished a member of society as any one else?"
Peter and Nick looked at each other and laughed at the way she had got up her subject, and Nick asked their kinsman if she didn't express it all in perfection. "I delight in general in artists, but I delight still more in their defenders," Peter made reply, perhaps a little meagrely, to Biddy.
"Ah don't attack me if you're wise!" Nick said.
"One's tempted to when it makes Biddy so fine."
"Well, that's the way she encourages me: it's meat and drink to me," Nick went on. "At the same time I'm bound to say there's a little whistling in the dark in it."
"In the dark?" his sister demanded.
"The obscurity, my dear child, of your own aspirations, your mysterious ambitions and esthetic views. Aren't there some heavyish shadows there?"
"Why I never cared for politics."
"No, but you cared for life, you cared for society, and you've chosen the path of solitude and concentration."