"I can. Through their pre-eminence in an art. The art of making atmospheres. It's as big an art as any other. Most women can exercise it, for reasons, by fits and starts. The best women work at it the whole of the time. Not one man in a million is aware of it. It's like air within the air. It may be deadly. Cramping and awful, or simply destructive, so that no life is possible within it. So is the bad art of men. At its best it is absolutely life-giving. And not soft. Very hard and stern and austere in its beauty. And like mountain air. And you can't get behind it, or in any way divide it up. Just as with 'Art.' Men live in it and from it all their lives without knowing. Even recluses." "Don't drive it too far, Miriam." "Well; I'm so staggered by it. All women, of course, know about it, and _there's_ the explanation of why women clash. Over what men call 'trifles.' Because the thing I mean goes through everything. A woman's way of 'being' can be discovered in the way she pours out tea. _Men_ can't get on together. If they're boxed up. Do you know there's hardly a partnership in Wimpole Street that's not a permanent feud. Yes. Would you believe it. And for scandal and gossip and jealousy there's _nothing_ to beat the professors in a University Town. Several of them don't speak. They communicate by letter.... But it's the women who are not grouped who can see all this most clearly. By moving, amongst the grouped women, from atmosphere to atmosphere. It's one of my principal social entertainments. I feel the atmosphere created by the lady of the house as soon as I get on to the door step." "Perceptive Miriam.... You _have_ a flair, Miriam. I grant you that. I believe in your flair." "Well, it's _true_, what I'm trying to tell you. It's one of the answers to the question about women and art. It's all there. It doesn't show, like men's art. There's no drama or publicity. _There_; d'you see? It's hard and exacting; needing 'the maximum of detachment and control.' And people have to learn, or be taught, to see it." "Y...es. Is it conscious?" "Absolutely. And there you are again. Artists, well, and _literary_ people, say they have to get away from everything at intervals. They associate with queer people, and some of them are dissipated. They can only rest, stop being artists, by getting _away_. That is why so many women get nervy and break down. The only way they can rest, is by being nothing to nobody, leaving off for a while giving out any atmosphere." "Stop breathing." "Yes. But if you laugh at that, you must laugh at artists, _and_ literary people." "I will. I _do_."