‘What, for instance?’
‘Well, three meals a day.’
Marcia laughed, and then she inquired—
‘Suppose you knew a person, Mr. Sybert, who didn’t care for anything but art—who just wanted to have the world beautiful and nothing else, what would you think?’
‘Not much,’ he returned; ‘what would you?’
‘I think that you go a great deal farther in the other extreme!’
‘Not at all,’ he maintained. ‘I am granting that art is a very fine thing; only there are so many more vital issues in life that one doesn’t have time to bother with it much. However, I suppose it’s a phase one has to go through with in Italy. Oh, I’ve been through with it, too,’ he added. ‘I used to feel that Botticelli and Giorgione and the rest of them were really important.’
‘But you got over it?’ she inquired.
‘Yes, I got over it—one does.’
Marcia laughed again. ‘Mr. Sybert,’ she said, ‘I think you are an awfully queer man. You are so sort of unfeeling in some respects and feeling in others.’