“What did you do?”
“I don't know what I should have done if Winnie had not held me back.” As it was, Burrowes whispered to him that the artist was overhearing the conversation.
“'Well, it will do her good,' says the old gentleman, and he went out storming. Then Burrowes came to me and complained that I had lost him a customer. He has the soul of a pork-butcher, that man!”
Then turning to Kent, her cheeks still flushed with anecdotal animation:
“That's how it is, you see!”
“Well,” said Kent, “perhaps you have reason to owe Philistia a grudge. I haven't. If it shuts its respectable doors on me, I shrug my shoulders and set up my wigwam outside, where I can smoke my pipe in peace. It is better not to care for the world—or anything, for that matter, if one has work to do. One's keenness on life ought to leave one no time for hating one's fellow-creatures.”
Winifred looked at Clytie, expecting to see her resent the implied rebuke. But Clytie only laughed softly to herself, leaning back in her chair, looking at her finger tips.
“You are by way of being a tonic, Mr. Kent,” she said, without looking at him.
Kent was disconcerted, could not find a reply. He stroked his tawny beard and moustache with his free hand, and looked at her somewhat puzzled. He had uttered his own robust faith, and she had seized a personal reference with which she appeared not displeased.
At last he said: