War. I beg your pardon.—I couldn't believe you really meant it.
Ger. I'll show you the mould if you like.
War. I don't know what you mean by that: you would never throw a wet sheet over a cast! (GER. lifts a painting from the floor and sets it on an easel. WAR. regards it for a few moments in silence.) Ah! by Jove, Gervaise! some one sent you down the wrong turn: you ought to have been a painter. What a sky! And what a sea! Those blues and greens—rich as a peacock's feather-eyes! Superb! A tropical night! The dolphin at its last gasp in the west, and all above, an abyss of blue, at the bottom of which the stars lie like gems in the mineshaft of the darkness!
Ger. You seem to have taken the wrong turn, Warren! You ought to have been a poet.
War. Such a thing as that puts the slang out of a fellow's bend.
Ger. I'm glad you like it. I do myself, though it falls short of my intent sadly enough.
War. But I don't for the life of me see what this has to do with that. You said something about a mould.
Ger. I will tell you what I meant. Every individual aspect of nature looks to me as if about to give birth to a human form, embodying that of which itself only dreams. In this way landscape-painting is, in my eyes, the mother of sculpture. That Apollo is of the summer dawn; that Aphrodite of the moonlit sea; this picture represents the mother of my Psyche.
War. Under the sheet there?
Ger. Yes. You shall see her some day; but to show your work too soon, is to uncork your champagne before dinner.