"I know that I have put some superlative workmanship into it," he answered, looking upon the creation of his hand and brains with critical grey-green eyes, curiously out of keeping with an ill-formed and unrestrained mouth. "Indeed you have. The thing is full of atmosphere, and your flesh tints are worthy of Perugino. You mean to give it to her?" "_Cela va sans dire_. She wants it as a present for her father." "Why not hang it first, at Home?" "Afterwards, perhaps. If she permits." "It is a big gift, Michel. It would fetch a high price; and we need money." Michael shrugged his shoulders with all an artist's scorn of "the common drudge." "Since when have you turned commercialist, _petite soeur_? If it is a question of starving, I can always paint another. I do not sell this one, _voila tout_. If it were only mine, I would have five lines of Swinburne under it for title. They express her to perfection. Listen-- 'Her flower-soft lips were meek and passionate, For love upon them like a shadow sat, Patient, a foreseen vision of sweet things, A dream with eyes fast shut and plumeless wings, That know not what man's love or life shall be.'" On the last line his voice deepened to an impassioned tone that brought an anxious crease to Quita's forehead. "I wonder which you are most in love with," she said on a forced note of lightness. "The girl herself, or your picture of her? Do you ever treat her to such rhapsodies in the flesh? They must be a little embarrassing for a child of twenty!" "Your 'child of twenty' is already very much a woman, and I have the right to say to her what I please." "Not altogether, _mon ami_--unless----" But Michael dismissed criticism as serenely as he dismissed consequences. The episode of the Countess was as though it had never been. "I have no concern with 'unless.' Such uncomfortable words are wiped out of my vocabulary. They affect me like a false note in music." Quita laughed. "No one knows that better than I do! But speaking simply as a woman, I know also that the man who opens our eyes to the passionate side of things involves himself in a big moral responsibility. And even _you_ cannot shelve the moralities altogether." "_Dela depend_. If the moralities hamper one's art, the shelf is the best place for them in my opinion." His sister did not answer at once. Michael's confession of faith was not a matter to be lightly dismissed; for the simple reason that he lived up to it in so far as human inconsistency will allow any man to live up to his faith, however ignoble. "I sometimes wonder whether one's art really does gain by that form of freedom," she said thoughtfully, "or only--one's consuming egotism." But the suggestion was rank heresy, and Michael would have none of it.