"If we were painters or musicians we should be safer. Their art draws them by one divine sense. Ours drags us by the heart and brain, by the very soul, into the thick of it. The unpardonable sin is separating literature from life. You know that as well as I do."
She did. She worked divinely, shaping unashamed the bodies and the souls of men. There was nothing in contemporary literature to compare with the serene, inspired audacity of Jane Holland. Her genius seemed to have kept the transcendent innocence of the days before creation.
Tanqueray continued in his theme. Talking like this allayed his excitement.
"We're bound," he said, "to get mixed up with people. They're the stuff we work in. It's almost impossible to keep sinless and detached. We're being tempted all the time. People—people—people—we can't have enough of 'em; we can't keep off 'em. The thing is—to keep 'em off us. And Jane, I know—they're getting at you."
She did not deny it. They were.
"And you haven't the—the nerve to stand up against it."
"I have stood up against it."
"You have. So have I. When we were both poor."
"You want me to be poor?"
"I don't want you to be a howling pauper like me, but, well, just pleasantly short of cash. There's nothing like that for keeping you out of it."