“I wish I had thrown them into the fire before I sent them there!”
“Well, when you come round again, you will be glad you didn’t,” said Manvers consolingly.
Tom took a turn or two up and down the room.
“You don’t understand me a bit,” he said suddenly. “Because I think that the Parthenon frieze is more beautiful than women with high-heeled shoes, you think I’m an idealist. I am a realist, just as much as you are, only I want to produce what I think is most beautiful. A beautiful woman has much in common with Greek art—and you want to produce what men, who are brutes, will say is most lifelike. You work for brutes, or what I call brutes, and I don’t.”
“But if I have come to the conclusion that what you call brutish appeals to more men than what you call beautiful, surely I am right to work for them? Of course most artists say they work for the few, but I, like them, confess that I wish the few to be as numerous as possible.”
“The greatest evil for the greatest number, I suppose you mean,” burst in Tom. “I call it pandering to vicious tastes.”
Manvers paused, then laid down the tool he was working with.
“You are overstepping the bounds of courtesy,” he said quietly. “You assume that my nature is vicious. That you have no right to do.”
Tom frowned despairingly.
“I know. It is quite true. I hate the men who always tell you that they say what they think, but I am one of them.”