too. You hate everything I like!" she flashed out. "Don't pretend, don't
pretend!" she went on as a sound of protest broke from him.

"I thought you so awfully _wanted_ me to paint," he gasped, flushed and
staring.

"I do--I do. That's why you must be free, why we must part?"

"Why we must part--?"

"Oh I've turned it well over. I've faced the hard truth. It wouldn't do
at all!" Julia rang out.

"I like the way you talk of it--as if it were a trimming for your
dress!" Nick retorted with bitterness. "Won't it do for you to be loved
and cherished as well as any woman in England?"

She turned away from him, closing her eyes as not to see something
dangerous. "You mustn't give anything up for me. I should feel it all
the while and I should hate it. I'm not afraid of the truth, but you
are."

"The truth, dear Julia? I only want to know it," Nick insisted. "It
seems to me in fact just what I've got hold of. When two persons are
united by the tenderest affection and are sane and generous and just, no
difficulties that occur in the union their life makes for them are
insurmountable, no problems are insoluble."

She appeared for a moment to reflect upon this: it was spoken in a tone
that might have touched her. Yet at the end of the moment, lifting her
eyes, she brought out: "I hate art, as you call it. I thought I did, I
knew I did; but till this morning I didn't know how much."

"Bless your dear soul, _that_ wasn't art," Nick pleaded. "The real thing
will be a thousand miles away from us; it will never come into the
house, _soyez tranquille_. It knows where to look in and where to flee
shrieking. Why then should you worry?"

"Because I want to understand, I want to know what I'm doing. You're an
artist: you are, you are!" Julia cried, accusing him passionately.

"My poor Julia, it isn't so easy as that, nor a character one can take
on from one day to the other. There are all sorts of things; one must be
caught young and put through the mill--one must see things as they are.
There are very few professions that goes with. There would be sacrifices
I never can make."

"Well then, there are sacrifices for both of us, and I can't make them
either. I daresay it's all right for you, but for me it would be a
terrible mistake. When I think I'm doing a certain thing I mustn't do
just the opposite," she kept on as for true lucidity. "There are things
I've thought of, the things I like best; and they're not what you mean.