"No. Damn you! You never do think. By God, I'd rather be the sort of fool to whom a woman is only a meal or a dinner. There's less mischief in that. What's the good of your emotions if you can't control them? You'd much better give it up like the rest of the world, shut yourself up in marriage to keep yourself out of harm's way. Who the devil are you, that you should claim in life the freedom an artist hopes to get in his art?" There was enough truth in Kilner's denunciation to enrage René. He had felt so clear and confident, so sure of mastering the event of his evil, and all this bitterness had him once more throbbing and confused. "What," he cried, "what does a work of art more or less matter? You can't expect the rest of us to live in filthiness so that you may paint pictures of a beauty that is never seen." To have stung René into a hot fury seemed to appease the artist somewhat. He grunted and said: "In a way you're right, and honestly I don't care a hang about the picture. I can paint it again and better. But I thought I was going to make some money with it, enough to get out of this forever, and it is almost more than I can bear to know that the harm has come through you. It doesn't matter. I'll paint it again. I'll get the fierce little spark of intelligence burning in Eve. I'd left that out. I'll paint her feeling half confident of her superiority to both God and Adam, and ashamed of having to submit to their fatuous pretense of creation, their old theatrical trick. Art and religion! They stink of the harem and aphrodisiacs, the abominable East, the gods of lust and self-mortification. What has your trumpery idealism to say to that?" He flung the tattered remains of the picture on the fire and held it down. The flames consumed the paint greedily and roared in the chimney. "So much for that," said Kilner. "Finished! I'll start again to-morrow. Let's go and see your little vixen and annoy her by showing that she hasn't hurt us in the least." "That's vindictive." "Ho! Have you turned Christian?" "I'm not going to have Ann moithered." "And why not? She must learn her lesson." "Let me find out why she did it first." "I know why she did it. Because she thought I had taken you away from her." "She can't have been jealous of you." "Women are always jealous of a man's men friends. They know his feeling can be just as strong for them without being weakened by sex. And they hate that-- Now, a feeling fortified by sex--ah! but that doesn't happen." "That," said René, "is exactly what has happened." "Eh? To you?" René nodded, and he told Kilner something of the walk in the west wind, the meeting with Cathleen, the deliverance it had brought to both of them. "Does she know? Ann, I mean." "No. I haven't seen her."