'Mr. Graham is very amusing. Only he is too well aware of it. He has been here once since that dinner, and we discussed you. He says he can't understand how you came to be a cousin of his—even a second cousin. He says he is l'homme qui rit, and you are l'homme qui prie.'
'He has let that off on me already, supplemented by the explanation that every extensive Jewish family embraces a genius and a lunatic. He admits that he is the genius. The unfortunate part for me,' ended Raphael, laughing, 'is that he is a genius.'
'I saw two of his little things the other day at the Impressionist Exhibition in Piccadilly. They are very clever and dashing.'
'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 ideals, 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?'