“Exactly so. It is folly to be wise. The rose gardens are part of the spirit of Greece, just as much as the plane-trees by the Ilyssus and the soi-disant delicate air.”
“And there are no plane-trees,” said Maud.
Tom laughed.
“So much the worse for the Ilyssus. If there are not, there ought to be.”
“Yes; but when some one who has been to Athens reads your description,” said Maud, “he will know that it doesn’t resemble Athens at all.”
“But one doesn’t write descriptions for people who have been there, nor do people who have been there read them,” said Manvers. “Books of travel are written for people who have never been abroad, and who will never go. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Carlingford?”
May crumbled her bread attentively.
“I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,” she said; “but go on. Won’t you tell us more?”
Manvers frowned. If one never takes one’s self seriously, it is terribly disconcerting to find that other people do.
“What I mean is that the literal accuracy of a description does not matter at all,” he said. “When Turner painted a picture, he arranged Nature as suited him. He raised the level of the sea two hundred feet, and made a valley where there was a hill. He made the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.”