Nielsen said nothing, but stood and looked at the picture too.
He had never seen it before. The tragedy in it arrested him—the measureless tragedy of that man and woman whirled through space in the resistless rush of a linked unrest—the unspeakable, compassionate anguish on the man’s lips, the undying love in his shadowed eyes, the suffering, and the eternal, wistful faith of the woman’s face. If ever the truth of life has been revealed in art, surely it is in that picture. There, is all the joy of life, and all its suffering, endless motion, and triumphant love.
Nielsen experienced a kind of indignation—it was unpleasantly disturbing. He swallowed a lump in his throat and turned away abruptly, he did not care to look at it too long. It was a relief to hear a man behind him remark to a woman that the “glass” was going down. After all, those were the things that mattered, luckily, more than a hundred dismal pictures. The “glass” was going down! That was infinitely satisfactory. He put his hands into the pockets of his overcoat, and worked them gently up and down. He felt much better. Then he wiped his eyeglass, and looked at Jocelyn.
She was still standing in front of the picture, looking as if she were going to faint. All his indignation returned. He went and got her a chair, put it down with its back to the picture, and made her sit in it. His eyes glowed angrily, and he twisted his moustache fiercely. Then he expressed his feelings—
“I should like to get that Monsieur Watts, and hang him on the walls of his own studio as a—a—pr-recept.” When he had caught the word, he hissed it from under his moustache.
“I consider it is quite indecent, don’t you know—the—the—confounded picture has made you ill.”
A rush of colour had come into Jocelyn’s cheeks, and, as she got up from her chair, she said—
“It’s very stupid of me! Don’t abuse the picture, please, I love it. It’s only coming into this hot room after the walk. I’m all right now.” She insisted on going round the studio again, and even upon discussing the merits of the various pictures, but they both avoided the “Paolo and Francesca,” and Nielsen knew by the tone of her voice that she was not herself.
On the way home in a cab, she hardly spoke at all, and leant back gazing straight in front of her. Nielsen became garrulous; he did not in the least understand what was the matter, but he considerately wished by chatter to divert her thoughts.
“Prrogress, civilisation!” he said, spreading his fingers out of the cab into an inattentive space, and bending forward with puckered eyes, “Ah! The ‘artist!’ He is nowhere. It is all ‘the man of action,’ don’t you know. He leads the way—he is the cause. The other fellow is only the effect, you see; he exists because there is somebody there already to hold him out his brread and butter. Look at the Romans! Ah! There you have the rreal Philistine. But look at his civilisation; look at his rroads, look at his baths, he—wăshed! They were men of action, and they held the brread and butter in their hands, don’t you know, for the other fellows to come and eat. Look at this country! Here you have more frreedom, more comfort, more justice than anywhere else that I have been; and yet you are barbarous men of action, don’t you know. Not one in a hundred of you has any sense of form or colour, but you manage to have as much art and as much music and literature, on the whole, as any other country. It is all a case of brread and butter, you see. You can pay the—how do you say it—the piper, so you call the tune.”