'Yes—love can always find it,' he said under his breath—'or make it.'
She wavered an instant, then she made a rally.
'I know nothing about that,' she said scornfully; 'I was thinking of art. Art breaks all chains, or accepts none. The woman that has art is free, and she alone; for she has scaled the men's heaven and stolen their sacred fire.'
She clasped her hands tightly on her knee; her face was full of aggression.
David sat looking at her, trying to smile, but his heart sank within him.
He threw away his pipe, and laid his hand down against the log, not far from her, trying to smile, but his heart sank within him.
He threw away his pipe and laid his head down against the log, not far from her, drawing his hat over his eyes. So they sat in silence a little while, till he looked up and said, in a bright beseeching tone:
'Finish me that scene in Hernani!'
The day before, after a matinee of Andromaque at the Theatre-Francais, in a moment of rebellion and reaction against all things classical, they had both thrown themselves upon Hernani. She had read it aloud to him in a green corner of the Bois, having a faculty that way, and bidding him take it as a French lesson. He took it, of course, as a lesson in nothing but the art of making wild speeches to the woman one loves.
But now she demurred.