"You mean he has lowered his standard?"
"My dear girl, what am I to do with my standard? Look at the rabble that are writing. I can't compare Tompkins with Shakespeare or Brown with Sophocles. I'm lucky if I can make out that Tompkins has surpassed Brown this year as Brown surpassed Tompkins last year; in other words, that Tompkins has surpassed himself."
"And so you go on, looking lower and lower."
"N-n-no, Lucia. I don't look lower; I look closer, I see that there is something to be said for Tompkins after all. I find subtler and subtler shades of distinction between him and Brown. I become more just, more discriminating, more humane."
"I know how fine your work is, and that's just the pity of it. You might have been a great critic if you hadn't wasted yourself on little things and little men."
"If a really big man came along, do you think I should look at them? But he doesn't come. I've waited for him ten years, Lucia, and he hasn't come."
"Oh, Horace—"
"He hasn't. Show me a big man, and I'll fall down and worship him. Only show him me."
"That's your business, isn't it, not mine? Still, I can show you one, not very far off, in fact very near."
"Too near for us to judge him perhaps. Who is he?"