“They have concerned me,” she insisted. “Believe me, Thornton, it was something deeper than ordinary morbid curiosity that led me to them.”
“But I can't see what the deuce the Social Question has to do with girls,” he said. “That is what licks me. What the dickens has it got to do with your life?”
“But you mistake, Thornton,” she replied eagerly, with a return of her old earnestness. “It is not the Social Question. Indeed not. I never have any call to look at things in that aspect. I am neither a sociologist nor a reformer. I am an artist. I have to express certain truths about human beings,—the little talent I have lies entirely that way,—and in order to express the truths I had to set to work to learn them. How all this corruption affects society, how it is to be done away with and so on, does not come within my province. But to get to the hearts and inner feelings of individuals, to see how society affects them, what justification they have in their struggle with it, how they contemplate life, what elements of emotion, or passion, or weariness, or what not form essential parts of their beings that do not form essential parts of mine—to try to do that, Thornton, has been my business, and, till I knew you, was the dearest motive of my life. Don't you see?”
“And when you have done it what good will it do to yourself or anybody else?”
“To answer you I should have to appear conceited. It would be answering the question, What is the good of art at all?”
“Well, all said and done, what is the good of it? To make pretty and amusing things to look at. All the rest is cant and humbug—including your desire to scrape acquaintance with loose women for artistic purposes. Look here, little wife”—and he turned round, with a sharp smile that showed his white teeth more than usual—“I didn't fall in love with you because you were an artist and held highfalutin' theories about artistic ideals and so forth, but because you were the woman whose loveliness appealed to me and always fascinated me. And now you are my wife you have other things to think about.”
“I know that, Thornton,” she replied, staring a little wistfully in front of her. “Tell me. What is our new life going to be like? You speak so little of it that I scarcely know.”
“Oh! what's the good of worrying yourself about it yet? I'll tell you when the time comes. You'll have our position in society to look after, keep things going straight for me in quarters where a woman can wheedle out more in an hour than a man in a twelvemonth. I have definitely taken up politics, you know. Things were settled this morning.”
“Oh, why didn't you tell me before?” she cried involuntarily.
“I never thought of it, my dear. Well, Hernshawe has asked me whether I would care to be his private secretary. His present man is in the Civil Service and is resigning owing to some office promotion, so when the House meets after the Whitsuntide recess Hernshawe will be free to take me.”