“That will do; you have earned the dollar. But you won’t mind my saying that I can get myself abused for less money. Do you ever have a really serious thought, Isabel? Take time to think about it, and tell me honestly.”
Again Isabel’s gaze went past him, bridging the bare plain and seeking infinity in the heights rising in mighty grandeur beyond the flat top of Table Mountain. When she spoke, raillery had given place to enthusiasm.
“Could any one live in sight of that”—pointing to the high-piled grandeur—“and not have thoughts too big for any kind of expression?”
“Oh, artistic thoughts, yes; I’ll admit that you can outthink most people on that line,” he rejoined.
“That is right; gird, if you want to. You are a Philistine, and you can’t help it, I suppose. Just the same, art is the real reality, and your petty business affairs are merely the playthings of life. If I could put on canvas the faintest impression, the merest foreshadowing of what you can see over there, every other accomplishment or enjoyment in the world would seem little by comparison.”
“There you go again,” said Antrim. “Now I like pretty things as well as anybody, but when you try to make me believe that the painting of them is the chief end of man—or of woman, for that matter—why, it’s like—” He searched for a sufficiently strong simile, and not finding one, ended rather irrelevantly. “Between you and Brant, I have a hard time of it trying to keep my feet on the everyday earth.”
Isabel ignored the tirade and went off at a tangent, as was her custom with Antrim.
“Mr. Brant is a college graduate, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Yes, I believe so. What of it?” demanded Antrim, who was so wholly imbued with the afflatus of business as to think small of scholarly attainments.
“Nothing; only I was thinking how much a college man has to be thankful for.”