"I have been told that you are an artist. Father says so, and Mr. Tomlin. It interested me enormously. You love your work for your work's sake. That is fine. And yet you tell me that you are unhappy, that it gives you a shock to meet me, because I stand for everything you want and can't get. What do you want?"
"Freedom for one thing."
"Mustn't freedom be earned? I have been taught so. You are serving, I suppose, your apprenticeship. The work you love may be a small part of that, and the rest drudgery. I used to loathe playing scales, but I tried to be jolly."
"Your position is assured."
"If you're the right sort, yours will be."
"I shall be jolly when it is. You ought to know all the truth, Miss Quinney, if my stupid affairs don't bore you too utterly?
"Can't you see how interested I am?"
"You are divinely kind. I can't express what your sympathy means to me. Well, you spoke of my rising. That's just where the shoe pinches. I have not risen; I have fallen."
"Fallen from—what?"
"My people were gentlepeople."