“Impossible,” repeated Olive. “No man can be a poet with mutton-chop whiskers.”
“What has the man’s appearance to do with his poetry?”
“Everything. Mutton chops and lyrics don’t rhyme—they’re like that woman’s emeralds against her turquoise bodice. A poet’s publisher should keep him out of sight—he damages sales. Look at the hook-nosed creature there with the goggles and the green gown—who would believe that is Mrs. Ashman Watford, who writes those dainty essays, and who, realizing it, could ever help reading her between the lines?”
“Or who,” retorted Mrs. Wyndwood, “reading the essays, could help seeing the beautiful soul behind the goggles?”
A tremor of sympathy traversed the painter’s form.
“I stand unreproved, Nor. You can afford to be magnanimous. But I contend that beautiful souls have no right to get mixed up with hooked noses. We ought to judge a soul by the body it keeps. If this country ever becomes a republic, it will be due, not to democracy, but to photography. You will agree with me, I know, Mr. Strang.”
He started, wondering what he was called upon to agree with.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” he quoted, vaguely.
“But you never put truly ugly persons into pictures,” Miss Regan persisted.
“No,” he admitted, “unless in portraits.”