Daphne assumed an air of dignity, an air that I had never before seen her assume—with me, at least.
"If I have talked with Mr. Vasari more than with you this morning, I think I had good reason. I saw a sneer come over your face as soon as he appeared, and so I took his part at once. What has he done to offend you, and what fault have you to find with him?"
I suppose if I had been perfectly truthful I should have replied that he had painted a picture that had made him famous, whereas I had done nothing to make myself famous, that he was handsome and I was not, and that as he was altogether a more attractive rival than myself I wished him at the devil. Perfect truthfulness, however, is not always observed in ordinary conversation, so I paraphrased my real meaning.
"He is too much of a genius to please me. He is a man with only one idea in his head, and that is Art. On any topic outside that circle he is mute. You think he admires your beauty, whereas he is thinking only what a good model you would make. He stands enraptured at the sunshine, and you cry, 'What a lover of nature!' whereas he is only thinking of the effect it would make on a canvas. He would paint a rose and swear that the copy was more lovely than the original. In everything Art comes first with him. According to him Art was not made for the world, but the world for Art. The world is only a place to paint in, to obtain pictorial effects from. Ask him to choose between living forever in this lovely valley of Rivoli and living forever in his studio studying a picture of it, and he would choose the canvas daub in preference to the reality. He is a monomaniac. I do like a man to have a comprehensive breadth and depth of mind."
An excellent way this of detracting from a man's abilities! Mr. A. is a great poet: exactly, but he knows nothing of science. Mr. B. is a great scientist: exactly, but he knows nothing of literature. Estimate a man, not by what he knows, but by what he does not know, and you can draw up a formidable indictment against him: as though, forsooth, it were possible for one mind to master the whole of the cyclopædia!
"In short," I concluded, "his conversation smells too much of the brush. He talks of nothing but 'shop.' I hate a fellow who is always talking 'shop.'"
Daphne evidently did not know how to reply to this tirade. She merely said: "You did not speak a single word to him at breakfast."
"Well, you see," I replied in an injured tone, "when a fellow has been a lady's companion for five months, he naturally feels that he has some claim upon her attention and he doesn't like being ignored."