"Nature has no discrimination."
"Exactly. And Nature has no consideration for our feelings, and very little maidenly reserve. Therefore we've invented Art."
Audrey leaned forward eagerly. She felt an unusual exaltation. At last she was in the centre of intellectual life, carried on by the whirl of ideas. She answered her companion at random.
"Yes," Mr. Flaxman Reed was saying, "my work is disheartening. Half my parish are animals, brutalised by starvation, degraded out of all likeness to men and women."
"How dreadful! What hard work it must be!"
"Hard enough to find decent food and clothing for their bodies. But to have to 'create a soul under those ribs of death'——" he paused. His voice seemed suddenly to run dry.
"Yes," said Audrey in her buoyant staccato, "I can't think how you manage it."
There was a moment of silence. Wyndham had turned from Miss Armstrong; Knowles and Ted had long ago joined Miss Haviland at the other end of the room, where Mr. Dixon Barnett, still irresistibly attracted by Katherine, hovered round and round the little group, with the fatal "desire of the moth for the star." Audrey stood up; Miss Armstrong was holding out her hand and pleading a further engagement. The little woman looked sour and ruffled: Wyndham's manner had acted on her like vinegar on milk. She was followed by Mr. Flaxman Reed. Wyndham dropped into the seat he left.
"Dixon," said Mrs. Barnett in a low voice which the explorer knew and obeyed. They were going on to a large "At Home."
Audrey turned to Wyndham with a smile, "I hope you are not going to follow them, Mr. Wyndham?"