"Experience? Experience is no good—the experience you mean—if you're an artist. It spoils you. It ties you hand and foot. It perverts you, twists you, blinds you to everything but yourself and it. I know women—artists—who have never got over their experience, women who'll never do anything again because of it."
"Then, my dear," said Frances, "you would say that geniuses would do very much better not to marry?" Her voice was sweet, but there was a light of sword-play in her eyes.
"I do say it—if they're thinking of their genius."
"Would you say it to Hugh?"
The thrust flashed sharp and straight.
"Why not?" said Jane, lightly parrying the thrust.
Sophy appeared again at that moment and said good-bye. They held her at parting with a gaze that still searched her and found her impenetrable. Their very embrace dismissed her and disapproved.
Tanqueray was waiting for her at the gate. He was going to see her home, he said. He wanted to talk to her. They could walk through Regent's Park towards Baker Street.
They had left the Levines' some way behind them when he turned to her.
"Jinny," he said, "what are you doing in that galley?"