“They couldn’t, you know, if we all see with different eyes.”
“O, this is puerile!” I cried, with a little shrug and laugh. “You don’t like my pictures, or what I call pictures. Very well, then, you don’t.”
“I think they are stuff and nonsense,” she answered, turning away from the wall. “But I do like your little mother: she is a real darling.”
She was lying in a corner, unfinished—my little clay model of startled yet innocent maternity.
“O! you like that!” I said, a solacing glow about my heart.
“You needn’t sneer,” she answered. “Why didn’t your atmospheric vibrations make a shapeless jelly of her too?”
“That is different. You must allow for the medium.”
“I don’t. There should be only one rule in Art, I am sure. What applies to this applies to all; and it amounts in the end to form. Everyone with the right eyes knows what beauty of form means. You do yourself, you see; and yet you can go and paint those pictures.”
“O, for heaven’s sake leave my pictures alone!”
“You shouldn’t raise your voice. It squeaks and cracks when you do. I’m sure I’ll leave them alone with pleasure.” But she couldn’t. “I’m glad anyhow,” she said, “that I don’t see things, even for a moment, as if they were all made up of one huge nettlerash.”