His sister did not answer at once. Michael's confession of faith was not a matter to be lightly dismissed; for the simple reason that he lived up to it in so far as human inconsistency will allow any man to live up to his faith, however ignoble.
"I sometimes wonder whether one's art really does gain by that form of freedom," she said thoughtfully, "or only—one's consuming egotism."
But the suggestion was rank heresy, and Michael would have none of it.
"Really, Quita, you are as enlivening as a Lenten service! Upon my soul, I'd sooner you turned vegetarian than developed a conscience! But believe me, I am devoted to Miss Mayhew. She is enchanting. A wild rose, half-open, with the dew still on her petals. Metaphorically, I am at her feet. Does that satisfy you, ma belle?"
"It might, if I had not heard a good deal of it before. You are chronically devoted to one or other of us, my beloved Pagan! That's the root of the difficulty."
In atonement for directness of speech, she laid hands upon his shoulders, and smiled very tenderly into his face.
"I am chronically devoted to you, coeur de mon coeur," he declared in all sincerity. "That is the only form of it I have yet known."
His reward was a butterfly kiss between the eyebrows.
"Out of your own mouth you stand condemned! It is quite charming for me; and for the rest—one accepts the unavoidable! But in sober prosaic truth, Michel, Elsie Mayhew is a great deal too good for you; and that nice Engineer boy, Mr Malcolm, is desperately in earnest about her, I have seen his whole heart in his eyes when he looks at her——"
"Mais, ma chère, what a serious derangement of his organism!" Michael broke in with irreverent laughter. "When all's said, the heart is a practical machine—even the heart of a lover, and a little of it must have been left below for pumping purposes!"