"I'm sorry to leave you alone in a bad mood, Michael; but I mean to go, whatever the weather chooses to say about it."
"Parbleu! But what has come to you, Quita? You are infatuated with that granite-natured Scotchman!"
"And if I am . . . I have every right to be."
Her gaze had returned to the vigorous outline on the easel, and her voice softened to an unconscious tenderness, peculiarly exasperating to a man in Michael's mixed frame of mind.
"Naturellement!" he answered with a shrug. "Being a woman, you have divine right to monopolise a man,—if the man is fool enough to submit to it. Nature is determined that you women shall not escape your real trade. That is why she takes care to make every one of you a bourgeois at heart. And all these years I have cherished the delusion that you, at least, were a genuine artist!"
"So I am. Every whit as much as yourself."
"And also—a genuine woman?"
"I hope so."
Michael smiled—a smile of superior knowledge.
"One cannot serve two masters, ma chère. That's where the complication comes in, when an artist happens also to be a woman. The creative force, mental or physical, is a master-force. Only a superhuman vitality can accomplish both with any hope of success. Succumb to your womanhood, and there's an end of your Art—voilà tout."