"Since when have you turned commercialist, petite soeur? If it is a question of starving, I can always paint another. I do not sell this one, voilà tout. If it were only mine, I would have five lines of Swinburne under it for title. They express her to perfection. Listen—
'Her flower-soft lips were meek and passionate,
For love upon them like a shadow sat,
Patient, a foreseen vision of sweet things,
A dream with eyes fast shut and plumeless wings,
That know not what man's love or life shall be.'"
On the last line his voice deepened to an impassioned tone that brought an anxious crease to Quita's forehead.
"I wonder which you are most in love with," she said on a forced note of lightness. "The girl herself, or your picture of her? Do you ever treat her to such rhapsodies in the flesh? They must be a little embarrassing for a child of twenty!"
"Your 'child of twenty' is already very much a woman, and I have the right to say to her what I please."
"Not altogether, mon ami—unless——"
But Michael dismissed criticism as serenely as he dismissed consequences. The episode of the Countess was as though it had never been.
"I have no concern with 'unless.' Such uncomfortable words are wiped out of my vocabulary. They affect me like a false note in music."
Quita laughed. "No one knows that better than I do! But speaking simply as a woman, I know also that the man who opens our eyes to the passionate side of things involves himself in a big moral responsibility. And even you cannot shelve the moralities altogether."
"Dela dépend. If the moralities hamper one's art, the shelf is the best place for them in my opinion."