“What a lovely garden this is!” remarked Donal after the sequent pause. “I have never seen anything like it.”
“It is very old-fashioned,” she returned. “Do you not find it very stiff and formal?”
“Stately and precise, I should rather say.”
“I do not mean I can help liking it—in a way.”
“Who could help liking it that took his feeling from the garden itself, not from what people said about it!”
“You cannot say it is like nature!”
“Yes; it is very like human nature. Man ought to learn of nature, but not to imitate nature. His work is, through the forms that Nature gives him, to express the idea or feeling that is in him. That is far more likely to produce things in harmony with nature, than the attempt to imitate nature upon the small human scale.”
“You are too much of a philosopher for me!” said Miss Graeme. “I daresay you are quite right, but I have never read anything about art, and cannot follow you.”
“You have probably read as much as I have. I am only talking out of what necessity, the necessity for understanding things, has made me think. One must get things brought together in one’s thoughts, if only to be able to go on thinking.”
This too was beyond Miss Graeme. The silence again fell, and Donal let it lie, waiting for her to break it this time.