“What did you do about it, Mr. Le Roy?”
“At first I tried to paint what I thought I saw, calling memory to supply the missing details.”
“And the result?”
“The picture had no charm whatever; there was nothing beautiful about it. I asked myself why it is that when I try to do my duty and paint faithfully I achieve so little, but when I care little for so-called faithful duty and accuracy I get something more or less admirable.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the Doctor, “I presume the first pair of eyes is always imitative, that is to say, photographic, and copies; the second, artistic or spiritual—but how about the third pair, the intermediate?”
“Whose?” asked Le Roy.
“The highly intellectual critic’s, self-constituted.”
“Oh, the critic! He always sees more than I do,” laughed Le Roy. “Let him pass; what I wish to tell you is this:
“Little by little I began to find out that my feeling was governed by a principle, and I needed to find out the law under which it would act—the law of the unit, that is, of impression; although I did not then understand it as such.”
Paul thought this a rather big undertaking, to discover any law which would apply to all feelings, no two alike. Le Roy continued: