"Did you say that?"
"I think, with you, that it is too good for me, Jane. But I am more convinced of its truth every day."
"Why not? There must be healing presences, since there are disturbing ones," Christiansen suggested.
Martin was in fine fettle, and from the moment of his arrival, he surcharged the group with his vitality. Even Jerry was aroused by it, and as for Jane, he looked at her and listened to her as if to a stranger. Evidently she and Christiansen were on terms of easy friendship and understanding. It gave him a queer sensation to think of Jane taking a man of Christiansen's distinction as a matter of course. More startling was the fact that Christiansen waited for Jane's opinion as if it were the crux of the discussion.
Until late into the night they talked about ideals in art. Neither Bobs nor Martin showed any surprise at Jane's able expression of her thoughts on the subject, but to Jerry it was a revelation. She had a directness of attack upon an idea which he knew to be characteristic of her, but it suddenly piqued his interest.
"After all, the art ideal is the personal ideal done large," said Christiansen. "The artist can express only such truth as is the content of his own heart and mind."
"That's like your modern ethical religion; it puts it all up to you. God doesn't have to do a thing," protested Jerry.
"God has to be, just as truth has to be. That is the most important thing, isn't it?" Jane asked him.
"That's it, Jane. Art is only the expression of God and truth. It is only the big soul that lets them seep through and take form, without being eaten by the acid of personal failings. If you are bitter, or abnormal, or degenerate yourself, God and truth come through, marked second class."
"It puts a tremendous responsibility upon the artist, as Paxton says, but why should he shirk it? He is the priest of his gift, he must do some penance," Christiansen said.