"You can call up before you the portrait of some beautiful woman, can you not, Mr. Harcourt?"
"Let me assist you," cried De Forrest, pulling from his inner pocket a photograph of Lottie.
"Hush, Julian. I'm sorry you do not appreciate this grave argument more; I'll take that picture from you, if you don't behave better."
"Well, I have a picture before me now, that satisfies me fully," said Mr. Harcourt, turning to Lottie with a smiling bow.
"Now, suppose that you had painted just such a likeness and finished it. Suppose I should come afterwards, and, without destroying your picture utterly, should blend with those features the forbidding aspect of the woman we have just seen, would you not say that your thought was greatly perverted?"
"I should think I would."
"Well, Mother Eve was the true expression of the Divine Artist's creative thought, and the woman we saw was the perversion of it. You can trace no evil thing to the source of all good. Perfection is not the author of imperfection."
"Who does the perverting, then?" asked Lottie.
"Evil."
"I don't think it fair that one face and form should be perverted into hideousness, and mother left with something of the first perfection."