“Would _you_ like to live in it, be of it, and worship at comfortably timed intervals in its correctly appointed temple of Dagon?” “No,” laughed Kent. “They wouldn't have me in it. I think they could stand less of me than I of them. They are God's creatures after all, you know. If you prick them, they bleed--and so forth. If they admire your little pictures, which I too admire vastly, there must be some saving grace in the Philistines.” Clytie shrugged her shoulders. “But why should I be obliged to paint in their way, and not in my way? That is what irritates me.” “Have you tried them with your way, as you call it?” Even Winifred could scarcely forbear flashing at Clytie a little smile of tender malice. “God bless my soul!” she whispered softly, and the two broke into unconstrained laughter. “Winifred is quoting, Mr. Kent. It was an elderly gentleman, stout, florid, lots of watch-chain--one of my patrons. He had bought one of my pictures at the dealer's, and came for another. Burrowes showed him one of my own own things. Winifred and I happened to be at the back of the shop at the time. The old gentleman put on his spectacles, looked at the picture, gave such a jump, held it in the light, and then gasped out: 'God bless my soul, Burrowes, has the young woman taken to drink?'” “What did you do?” “I don't know what I should have done if Winnie had not held me back.” As it was, Burrowes whispered to him that the artist was overhearing the conversation. “'Well, it will do her good,' says the old gentleman, and he went out storming. Then Burrowes came to me and complained that I had lost him a customer. He has the soul of a pork-butcher, that man!” Then turning to Kent, her cheeks still flushed with anecdotal animation: “That's how it is, you see!” “Well,” said Kent, “perhaps you have reason to owe Philistia a grudge. I haven't. If it shuts its respectable doors on me, I shrug my shoulders and set up my wigwam outside, where I can smoke my pipe in peace. It is better not to care for the world--or anything, for that matter, if one has work to do. One's keenness on life ought to leave one no time for hating one's fellow-creatures.” Winifred looked at Clytie, expecting to see her resent the implied rebuke. But Clytie only laughed softly to herself, leaning back in her chair, looking at her finger tips. “You are by way of being a tonic, Mr. Kent,” she said, without looking at him. Kent was disconcerted, could not find a reply. He stroked his tawny beard and moustache with his free hand, and looked at her somewhat puzzled. He had uttered his own robust faith, and she had seized a personal reference with which she appeared not displeased. At last he said: