Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/78

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A Puritan Bohemia

chievously. "Then the less I know about human expression the better."

He did not listen.

"You know that this is true. If you don't you will find it out as you grow older. Then why won't you come and learn your art by living?"

The tone angered her.

"The general and the particular aren't quite the same. Saying that I ought to know love isn't quite the same as saying that I ought to be your wife.

"Don't look like that, Howard," she begged, a minute after. "I did not mean to be unkind. Tell me: do you mean on general principles that my pictures ought to look as if I did not understand things, or do they look so?"

"They do look so, I think," he answered slowly. "It isn't honest human feeling, but a woman's notion of things she hasn't known."

A startled look came into Anne's eyes.

"At least," she said coldly, "I am not a monster. I shall not sacrifice you to my