Lotta could not help laughing, though she protested: "What a shame!"
"I can't help it," said Kilner, "other people's love affairs always are comic, and Fourmy--well, he is simply inappropriate in a community of creatures who live by cunning."
"You've hit it," replied Lotta. "I've been trying to understand what it was made him so exceptional. Creatures who live by cunning---- Thank you, Mr. Kilner."
"All artists are like that. Cunning is no use in the pursuit of art. But they are insulated by their work as ordinary people are by convention and habit. No artist takes personal relationships seriously. They happen. He handles them well or makes a mess of them. It does not greatly matter. The ordinary being cannot appreciate any personal relationship until it is conventionalized and stripped of its vigor and value. Well--you have seen your Fourmy in action."
Kilner told her what he could make of the new disaster, and how Ann had hated him and destroyed his work.
"I imagine," he said, "that the same blind instinct operated against Fourmy. He's creative also in a way. My pictures, his life, his precious romantic life, are both things slowly shaped out of chaos, and the creative process in a man is absolutely indifferent to the stupid security most women value. Ann did her ridiculous little best to stop it in both of us."
"Poor girl," said Lotta, "I can imagine the two of you driving her distracted. After all, what she was going through was important to her."
"But only to her. She wanted it to be important for him. It couldn't be: it was quite meaningless."
"If she weren't," said Kilner, "we should never have developed intelligence, let alone imagination."
"I'll look after Fourmy if you'll take charge of Ann. Only, remember, you are not supposed to know that she did it, and, please, I have told you nothing about my picture."
The caution was unnecessary, for Ann tumbled out a full confession as she sank into the comfort of Lotta's kindness. She guessed at once who Lotta was, but was too exhausted for resentment. She had dragged herself off to her work in order to fill in the creeping hours.
Lotta said she was a friend of René's, and wished to help, and asked if there was anything she could do. Ann burst into tears and rolled her head from side to side, and cried: