"The subject you've started," said he, "is of course, to me, the most interesting. Please develop your thesis."
"Well then, your pictures are good, strong, thorough stuff, with sentiment—yes, just enough sentiment to keep them from the brutality of Degas or the sensualism of Latouche. Whereas you, yourself, seem to have no sentiment."
"I? No sentiment! Oh, Bobby, this is too much! Why, I'm a mass of it! Ask—"
"Yes, ask any woman of your acquaintance. That's just it—or just part of it. You fool them into thinking—oh, I don't know what; but you don't fool me."
"I haven't tried."
"Then you're not brutal, except half a dozen times in the year when you—And I've noticed that when your temper goes smash your morals go at the same time. Is that cause or effect? What's the real you like, and where do you keep it?"
"The real me," said Vernon, "is seen in my pictures, and—and appreciated by my friends; you for instance, are, I believe, genuinely attached to me."
"Oh, rot!" said Bobby.
"I don't see," said Vernon, moving his iron chair to make room for two people at the next table, "why you should expect my pictures to rhyme with my life. A man's art doesn't rhyme with his personality. Most often it contradicts flatly. Look at musicians—what a divine art, and what pigs of high priests! And look at actors—but no, one can't; the spectacle is too sickening."
"I sometimes think," said Temple, emptying his glass, "that the real you isn't made yet. It's waiting for—"