Quita was still at her easel, trying bravely to disregard the collapse of her happy omen; Michael lounging in a cane chair, with Shelley and a cigarette. He had returned from Jundraghat in a mood of skin-deep nonchalance, beneath which irritation smouldered, and Quita's news had set the sparks flying. Behold him, therefore, doubly a martyr; ready, as always, to make capital out of his crown of thorns. A renewed pattering on the verandah slates roused him from the raptures of the Epipsychidion. "Well, at least you can't think of going _now_," he said, flinging the book aside with a gesture of impatience. "That's one blessing, if the rest's a blank." Quita, who was washing out her brushes, looked round quickly. "I'm sorry to leave you alone in a bad mood, Michael; but I mean to go, whatever the weather chooses to say about it." "_Parbleu_! But what has come to you, Quita? You are infatuated with that granite-natured Scotchman!" "And if I am . . . I have every right to be." Her gaze had returned to the vigorous outline on the easel, and her voice softened to an unconscious tenderness, peculiarly exasperating to a man in Michael's mixed frame of mind. "_Naturellement_!" he answered with a shrug. "Being a woman, you have divine right to monopolise a man,--if the man is fool enough to submit to it. Nature is determined that you women shall not escape your real trade. That is why she takes care to make every one of you a bourgeois at heart. And all these years I have cherished the delusion that you, at least, were a genuine artist!" "So I am. Every whit as much as yourself." "And also--a genuine woman?" "I hope so." Michael smiled--a smile of superior knowledge. "One cannot serve two masters, _ma chere_. That's where the complication comes in, when an artist happens also to be a woman. The creative force, mental or physical, is a master-force. Only a superhuman vitality can accomplish both with any hope of success. Succumb to your womanhood, and there's an end of your Art--_voila tout_." "But no, Michel. I won't believe that." She spoke stoutly, though cold fear was upon her that a germ of truth lurked in his statement. "Believe it or not, as you please. You are on the high-road to make the discovery for yourself, and you will find it a case of no compromise. One of the two must predominate. You will either become an amateur artist or an amateur wife and mother. Which do you suppose it will be?" She shut her paint-box with an impatient snap. "I really don't know. I am not in the mood for abstract speculation." "No. You are in the mood for concrete love-making; and in pursuit of it, you're ready to face a drenching, to leave me is the worst possible company, without a sisterly qualm, and without even troubling to put my razor in your pocket."