"I am told he draws ballet-girls," said Raphael, moodily.
"Yes, he is a disciple of Degas."
"You don't like that style of art?" he said, a shade of concern in his voice.
"I do not," said Esther, emphatically. "I am a curious mixture. In art, I have discovered in myself two conflicting tastes, and neither is for the modern realism, which I yet admire in literature. I like poetic pictures, impregnated with vague romantic melancholy; and I like the white lucidity of classic statuary. I suppose the one taste is the offspring of temperament, the other of thought; for intellectually, I admire the Greek ideas, and was glad to hear you correct Sidney's perversion of the adjective. I wonder," she added, reflectively, "if one can worship the gods of the Greeks without believing in them."
"But you wouldn't make a cult of beauty?"
"Not if you take beauty in the narrow sense in which I should fancy your cousin uses the word; but, in a higher and broader sense, is it not the one fine thing in life which is a certainty, the one ideal which is not illusion?"
"Nothing is illusion," said Raphael, earnestly. "At least, not in your sense. Why should the Creator deceive us?"
"Oh well, don't let us get into metaphysics. We argue from different platforms," she said. "Tell me what you really came about in connection with the Flag."
"Mr. Goldsmith was kind enough to suggest that you might write for it."
"What!" exclaimed Esther, sitting upright in her arm-chair. "I? I write for an orthodox paper?"