"You are going back to art, George?"
"No! Never!"
Frances grew pale. She thought she had torn open his gaping wound.
"I did not mean to remind you of—of——"
"No, it isn't that!"
He scowled at the fire. Art meant for him his own countless daubs, and the sickening smell of oily paints and musk, and soiled silk tea gowns, and the whole slovenly, disreputable scramble of Bohemian life in Paris.
"I loathe art!" he said, with a furious blow at the smouldering log in the fireplace, as if he struck these things all down into the ashes with it.
"Will you go back into the Church, dear?" his mother ventured timidly.
"Most certainly, no!" he said vehemently. "Of all mean frauds the perfunctory priest is the meanest. If I could be like one of the old holy gospellers—then indeed!"
He was silent a moment, and then began to stride up and down the long hall, his head thrown back, his chest inflated.