"Nothing to call us away from our idle happiness here!" he continued. "Do you say—nothing?"
"Why—no. For we are free; we have no ties. You have no profession, Mark. You have no art even to call you back to England. Dear father—how he worships the arts!"
"And you, Kitty—you?"
Mark spoke with a curious pressure of excitement.
"He has taught me to love them too."
"How much, Kitty? As he loves them, more than anything else on earth?"
She had never heard him speak at all like this. She answered:
"Ah no. For my mother——"
She paused.
"My mother has made me understand that there is something greater than any art, more important, more beautiful."