“Why is it? I don’t know. I don’t know. The pictures are cheap, and they are easy, and they cost the audience nothing, no feeling of the heart, no appreciation of the spirit, cost them nothing of these. And so they like them, and they don’t like us, because they must feel the things we do, from the heart, and appreciate them from the spirit. There!”
“And they don’t want to appreciate and to feel?” said Mr. May.
“No. They don’t want. They want it all through the eye, and finished—so! Just curiosity, impertinent curiosity. That’s all. In all countries, the same. And so—in ten years’ time—no more Kishwégin at all.”
“No. Then what future have you?” said Mr. May gloomily.
“I may be dead—who knows. If not, I shall have my little apartment in Lausanne, or in Bellizona, and I shall be a bourgeoise once more, and the good Catholic which I am.”
“Which I am also,” said Mr. May.
“So! Are you? An American Catholic?”
“Well—English—Irish—American.”
“So!”
Mr. May never felt more gloomy in his life than he did that day. Where, finally, was he to rest his troubled head?