"Not much. I've been studying sculpture this winter, especially the moderns, with Bobs." "What do you think of them?" he asked curiously. "They interest me extremely. I supposed that I did not respond to sculpture, but these modern men are expressing thought, not merely form. I have spent hours with the Rodin figures at the Metropolitan--hours of refreshment." "Is Christiansen going to make a critic of you?" "No. He couldn't. I have no critical sense at all. I only respond to the things I understand, or the things I vision spiritually, without understanding." "Have you interested yourself in painting, too?" "Yes. Bobs and Mr. Christiansen both say that I react to the right things for the most part. But I'm hopeless when it comes to some of the old masters. Rubens, for instance. How I do hate his obese people! I don't care how well he can paint, because I hate what he paints." "There's hope for you, Jane, if you admit at the start that you are a heretic." "I have to tell the truth. I am not clever enough to bluff." "So you think that Bobs is a genius." "Yes. I feel that she has the divine fire." "Has she sold anything this winter?" "I think not." "How does she get along?" "Borrows the rent, eats around with anybody who has food. When she sells something she will repay it two-fold." "Poor old Bobs! Ask her down by all means." "She's splendid, I think." "But you wouldn't like to live as she does." "I would not care, if my spirit were growing as hers is." "You'd miss your cream, Kitty, and your sunny garden." "Yes, but the whole world would gain by my loss." "I wonder if that is a comfort?" Jerry mused. "Somebody ought to marry Bobs." "She has the usual woman's excuse for marrying." "What is that?" "A lonely soul. I suppose men have it, too--a sort of isolation within the race, a pining to be set free from the torment of solitude. Bobs has an exceptional nature, so she is more than usually at the mercy of suffering; her needs are intensified." "She has all sorts of ideas, you know, about freedom in love, the right to motherhood, and all the rest of it. That's what's the matter with her; she's got a lot of crank notions that won't work out." Jane laughed. "What's the matter?" "I was wondering if you had considered Bobs's ideas seriously enough to damn them so finally." "No, I haven't. I have no patience with them." "'Where ignorance is bliss,' says Jerry!" Jane teased. He was putting away his painting things, from which he looked up and flushed. "Look here, Jane, don't treat me like the little boy who upset the jam!" "Don't talk like him, then, little boy Jerry," was her smiling answer. CHAPTER XVII