Here in this room he was another man. The humility that was his most endearing quality was submerged in his creative arrogance. Almost it seemed that he resented her intrusion as a menace to the life which he had made for himself, the world of suffering and tortured creatures with which he had surrounded himself, the creatures whom he had loved so much that contact with his fellows had come to be in some sort a betrayal of them. To an extraordinary degree the atmosphere of the room was charged with his personality, and with the immense continuous effort he had made to achieve his purpose. Here there was something demoniac and challenging in him. He presented this empty room to her as his life and seemed to hurl defiance at her to disturb it. She had never had so fiercely stimulating a challenge to her personality. In her heart she compared this austere room with the ceremony of the Imperium, and there was no doubt which of the two contained the more vitality. Here in solitude was a man creating that which alone which could justify the elaborate and costly machinery of the great theatre which had been used for almost a generation by the bland and boyish Sir Henry Butcher to exploit his own engaging personality. Clara was ashamed of the jealousy which had made her snatch Rodd's work out of his hand. It had set his passion raging against her. He who had faced the hostility and indifference of the world all through his ambitious youth was inflamed by the hostility of love which had shaken but not yet uprooted his fierce will--never to compromise, but to adhere to the logic of his vision. The rage in him was intolerable. She said,-- 'You don't like it?' What?' 'My being at the Imperium.' 'It is not for me to like or dislike. I am not the controller of your movements. I would never control the movements of any living creature.' 'Except in your work.' 'They work out their own salvation. They are nothing to do with me, any more than the woman on the stairs.' 'But you love them.' (He had made them as real to her as they were to himself.) 'They don't leave me alone. They want to live.... But they can only live on the stage.' He shook back his head and with supreme arrogance he said,-- 'As they will when the stage is fit for them.' She could not bear the strain any longer, and to bring him back to actuality she said,-- 'How old are you?' 'Thirty-one.' His next move horrified her. He stepped forward, seized his manuscript, and tore it into fragments. 'There!' he said, 'are you satisfied?' 'No. That was childish of you.... You will only sit down and begin all over again.'