Morrison's indifference to the buzz about his name was especially maddening, because he wished to prove to her that in painting dwelt a joy beside which her trumpery little ecstasy in woods and flowers was nothing, nothing at all. He wished to convince himself that he had not been really disturbed by her first visit to his studio. Only the shock of novelty he had felt, and by his success, by his triumphant work, he had obliterated it. . . . She was nothing, he told himself, only a raw girl, smooth and polished by her easy life, good for nothing except to be made love to by such as Mitchell. Love? They called it love when a young man clasped a maiden's hand, or when they kissed and rode together on the tops of buses! These Christians were rather disgusting with all their talk of love. He had heard more talk of it in three years of contact with them than in all his life before, and Weldon and others had talked of love in connection with Hetty Finch. Disgusting! And now here was Mitchell babbling of his love for Morrison. When Mendel wanted to talk of pictures and art and the old painters who had worked simply without reference to success, Mitchell kept dragging him back to Morrison, her simplicity, her extraordinary childlike innocence, her love of beauty, her generous trustfulness, her queer sudden impulses. "What has such a girl as that to do with art or with artists?" said Mendel furiously. "An artist wants women as he wants his food, when he has time for them." "Gawd!" says Mitchell, trotting along by his side; "you don't know what you are talking about. I tell you I never believed all that trash about a young man being redeemed by a virtuous girl until now." "It's nonsense!" shouted Mendel; "nonsense, I tell you. It must be nonsense, because it didn't matter to you whether it was Clowes or Morrison, and for all I know, it may be both." "Clowes is a jolly nice girl too," replied Mitchell, "but she's more ordinary. I never met anyone like Morrison before. I can't make her out, but she does make me feel that I am an absolute rotter. It is her fresh enjoyment of simple things that disturbs me and makes me see what a mess I've made of my life. Once an artist loses that, he is finished." They had been reading Tolstoi on "What is Art?" and their young conceit had been put out by it. Must their extraordinary powers produce work accessible to the smallest intelligence? Mendel had been greatly influenced by that theory in his portrait of his mother, while Mitchell's energy had been paralysed so that he could produce nothing at all. "Yes," Mitchell went on, "I know now what Tolstoi means. He means that love can speak direct to love, and, by Jove! it is absolutely true. Brains are only a nuisance to an artist. Look at Calthrop! He hasn't got the brains of a louse. Of course, that is why painters are such an ignorant lot. I must tell my father that when he goes for me for not reading."