"You have gone too far the other way, I fear," she said, sadly. "Our lives, even at the best, are far from being the ideal you present. It seems very strange to me to hear you say those things—"
"I have given the matter much thought," he replied. "If I have made you think of the woes of the world, so you have shown me glimpses of a life where men and women are almost free from care. We are mutually instructed." He rose at this point and, after hesitation, said: "When you go I wish you would leave this room just as it is, and when I am tired and irritable and lonely I'll come here and imagine myself a part of your world of harmonious colors, with no race questions to settle and no harsh duties to perform. Will you do this? These few hangings and lamps and easels are unimportant to you—you won't miss them; to me they will be priceless, and, besides, you may come back again some time. Say you will. It will comfort me."
There was a light in his eyes and an intensity in his voice which startled her. She stammered a little.
"Why, of course, if it will give you the slightest pleasure; there is nothing here of any particular value. I'll be glad to leave them."
"Thank you. So long as I have this room as it is I shall be able to persuade myself that you have not passed utterly out of my life."
She was a little alarmed now, and hastened to say: "I do not see why we should not meet again. I shall expect you to call when you come to Washington—" she checked herself. "I'm afraid my sense of duty to the Tetongs is not strong. Don't think too hardly of me because of it."
He seemed intent on another thought. "Do you know, you've given me a dim notion of a new philosophy. I haven't organized it yet, but it's something like this: Beauty is a sense of fitness, harmony. This sense of beauty—call it taste—demands positively a readjustment of the external facts of life, so that all angles, all suffering and violence, shall cease. If all men were lovers of the beautiful, the gentle, then the world would needs be suave and genial, and life harmoniously colored, like your own studio, and we would campaign only against ugliness. To civilize would mean a totally different thing. I'm not quite clear on my theory yet, but perhaps you can help me out."
"I think I see what you mean. But my world," she hastened to say, "is nothing like so blameless as you think it. Don't think artists are actually what they should be. They are very human, eager to succeed, to outstrip each other; and they are sordid, too. No, you are too kind to us. We are a poor lot when you take us as a whole, and the worst of it is the cleverest makers of the beautiful are often the least inspiring in their lives. I mean they're ignorant and spiteful, and often dishonorable." She stopped abruptly.
"I'm sorry to hear you say that. It certainly shatters a beautiful theory I had built up out of what you and other artists have said to me." After a little silence he resumed: "It comes down to this, then: that all arts and professions are a part of life, and life is a compromise between desire and duty. There are certain things I want to do to-day, but my duties for to-morrow forbid. You are right in going away with your father—I'm not one to keep you from doing that—but I must tell you how great has been the pleasure of having you here, and I hope you will come again. If you go to-morrow morning I shall not see you again."
"Why not?"