“And you have selected this novel way of showing it!” As Ouida said this, she laughed with such chilling scorn, that it made the preacher shudder with agony. “That we will not discuss,” said he, as the echo of her scorn died away. “Your life, your Bohemian instincts, your defiance of social laws, has maddened me. I would drive you from this unreal existence, so that in your despair you would turn to me. Then I should uplift you to my grand sphere.” The idea of Horatio Nugent’s condescension struck Ouida with wondrous merriment, and she laughed again, the laughter growing more intense each moment, until it developed into an indignation almost boundless. “Your own grand sphere!” she cried. “Drive back the Atlantic surf; lift valleys over mountain tops; throttle Vesuvius, and then come to me with a hope of tearing me and my art apart. I would not exchange an eternity in hell and my work for Paradise with the crude, narrow, dogmatic officialism of your hypocritically pious life.” “I have less quarrel with your art than with your life,” continued he. “These Bacchanalian revels, this freedom with men so maddening to me. These are the things from which I would save you.” “Sir,” said she, with supreme dignity, “my life is my own. Society did nothing for me. I have with these hands carved out my fame. You and your kind no more understand art, than you do the voice of Nature. I have sat nude beneath a master’s brush, without an impure thought. I have painted men as naked as the new-born babe, without a quicker pulse beat, wrapped in a dream. My art shall live when churches shall crumble, and preachers’ bones shall mingle with the dust. Divinity touches the brow of genius, and art becomes the heritage of generations yet unborn.” A goddess could not have looked more divine than this woman did, as she poured forth the inspiration of her swelling, throbbing soul. There was silence again between them. But he at length recovered speech, and renewed the attack. “Ah, Ouida, you are noble and good; why not economize this worth for grander and purer aspirations?” “Purer aspirations?” she echoed. “Ah, sir, I am bursting with the fullness of rage. Who are you, that gives you the almost divine right to preach against a thing you know not of? You have not looked on life; you have tasted no agony; you have not walked through the blazing furnace of passion.” “God alone knows what my battle has been since the knowledge came to me that I loved you.” “Your passion, sir preacher, moves me not.” “Then, pitilessly, you will send me out into the gloomy world without a ray of hope?” “Did you not seek to make the earth for me a place without sun or light?” “But I have made my atonement, and come now to crave pardon for my sin.” “You cannot think thus to move me,” said the woman, firmly. “Can nothing soften your heart of stone?” he appealed.