"You, you would do that, after I guided you here! You would take advantage of what I could not help, and—and—" she choked, and then said swiftly—"so, under your indifferent exterior you used your touch that way these days! Oh, you—you beast!"
Lawrence laughed coolly. "I could no more help it than I can avoid being here."
"Lies!" she exclaimed. "A gentleman could help it!"
"Perhaps, but not an artist."
"And what of beauty, of your boasted purity of art, is there in that?"
"All," he said calmly. "If you knew, oh, if I could make you see what every artist knows"—he was talking passionately now, his face illumined in spite of his blind eyes—"you would realize, that I could not help it, that I glory in it, and that it was and is the way of art."
He rose and walked the floor, pouring out his creed in a stream of burning words. "I am a machine, a sensitive thing that registers what it feels and knows, that is all. You touch me, my brain registers that touch, and something in me, the will to live, the desire to create, the insistent shout for expression says, 'Take that and carve it in stone.' If I could see, if I were not blind, I would have been a painter. I would have painted you, almost naked as you were, your eyes filled with the hunger for life, your face tense with racing thoughts, I would have painted you fully, all of you, as you were in night-gown and skirt there in that forest, and you would have shouted to all the world from my canvas, 'Look at me, I am the primitive, the wild, the passionate, the tender, the selfish and unselfish living woman. See me as I am, cultured, refined, educated, elemental withal, and the emblem of humanity as it is, still stained with the traditional mud of superstition and blood that marks its origin. Oh, I would have painted you so, and now I shall carve you so!"
He stopped, and Claire looked at him wildly, her eyes aflame with hate and admiration.
"You would use another human being that way?" she gasped.
"I would use any one, I would, I will, at any cost to them, to me, if the outcome be a piece of art, a work that in its truth, its immortal beauty, shall stand a lasting testimony that I, Lawrence Gordon, have mastered blindness and registered life correctly."