On the other hand, as is always the case in parties of two, where harmony of mood is very rare, he had never seen Felicia so affectionate, in such merry humor. She was in a state of effervescent, almost childlike gayety, one of those fervent outbursts of emotion which one experiences when some danger has passed, the reaction of a clear, blazing fire after the excitement of a shipwreck. She laughed heartily, teased Paul about his accent and what she called his bourgeois ideas. "For you are shockingly bourgeois, you know. But that is just what I like in you. It's on account of the contrast, I have no doubt, because I was born under a bridge, in a gust of wind, that I have always been fond of sedate, logical natures." "Oh! my dear, what do you suppose Monsieur Paul will think, when you say you were born under a bridge?" exclaimed the excellent Crenmitz, who could not accustom herself to the exaggeration of metaphors, and always took everything literally. "Let him think what he pleases, my Fairy. We haven't our eye on him for a husband. I am sure he would have none of that monster known as an artist wife. He would think he had married the devil. You are quite right, Minerva. Art is a despot. One must give oneself to it unreservedly. You put into your work all the imagination, energy, honesty, conscience that you possess, so that you have no more of any of them as long as you live, and the completion of the work tosses you adrift, helpless and without a compass, like a dismasted hulk, at the mercy of every wave. Such a wife would be a melancholy acquisition." "And yet," the young man ventured timidly to observe, "it seems to me that art, however exacting it may be, cannot take entire possession of the woman. What would she do with her affections, with the craving for love, for self-sacrifice, which is in her, far more than in man, the motive for every act?" She mused a moment before replying. "You may be right, O wise Minerva! It is the truth that there are days when my life rings terribly hollow. I am conscious of holes in it, unfathomable depths. Everything disappears that I throw in to fill them up. My noblest artistic enthusiasms are swallowed up in them and die every time in a sigh. At such times I think of marriage. A husband, children, a lot of children, tumbling about the studio, all their nests to look after, the satisfaction of the physical activity which is lacking in our artistic lives, regular occupations, constant movement, innocent fun, which would compel one to play instead of always thinking in the dark and the great void, to laugh at a blow to one's self-esteem, to be simply a happy mother on the day when the public casts one aside as a used-up, played-out artist."