“It won’t matter what you call them,” said Roderick. “They shall be simply divine forms. They shall be Beauty; they shall be Wisdom; they shall be Power; they shall be Genius; they shall be Daring. That ‘s all the Greek divinities were.”
“That ‘s rather abstract, you know,” said Miss Blanchard.
“My dear fellow,” cried Gloriani, “you ‘re delightfully young.”
“I hope you ‘ll not grow any older,” said Singleton, with a flush of sympathy across his large white forehead. “You can do it if you try.”
“Then there are all the Forces and Mysteries and Elements of Nature,” Roderick went on. “I mean to do the Morning; I mean to do the Night! I mean to do the Ocean and the Mountains; the Moon and the West Wind. I mean to make a magnificent statue of America!”
“America—the Mountains—the Moon!” said Gloriani. “You ‘ll find it rather hard, I ‘m afraid, to compress such subjects into classic forms.”
“Oh, there ‘s a way,” cried Roderick, “and I shall think it out. My figures shall make no contortions, but they shall mean a tremendous deal.”
“I ‘m sure there are contortions enough in Michael Angelo,” said Madame Grandoni. “Perhaps you don’t approve of him.”
“Oh, Michael Angelo was not me!” said Roderick, with sublimity. There was a great laugh; but after all, Roderick had done some fine things.
Rowland had bidden one of the servants bring him a small portfolio of prints, and had taken out a photograph of Roderick’s little statue of the youth drinking. It pleased him to see his friend sitting there in radiant ardor, defending idealism against so knowing an apostle of corruption as Gloriani, and he wished to help the elder artist to be confuted. He silently handed him the photograph.