Vane.
(looking at picture) Will you never learn to be an artist, Denham? The modern picture should be a painted quatrain, with colours for words—words which say nothing, because everything has been said, but which suggest all that has been felt and dreamed. Art is the initiation into a mood, a mystery—a sphinx whose riddle every one can answer, yet no one understand.
Fitzgerald.
(shutting the book on his finger) Bravo, Vane! 'Pon my word, I begin to believe in you.
Vane.
I can endure even that.
Denham.
I am on the wrong tack then?
Vane.
My dear fellow, look at that canvas. What a method! You are like an amateur pianist who tries laboriously to obtain tone, without having mastered the keyboard. One cannot blunder into great art. Only Englishmen make the attempt. You are a nation of amateurs. (He turns away, and sees a sketch on the l wall) Did you do this?