"Oh! is that all?" asked Barbara, with genial sarcasm.
"They overlaid life," he adds, "with that varnish of wonderful singular sweetness which has never been wholly rubbed off."
Barbara listened in silence, whilst I read on.
"Love, and go straight on your way—that is the new formula—a very effective one, since it converts dogmas into sentiments." Again this definition: "The kingdom of God—that is a state in which every one's actions would be prompted by love."
"It sounds nice," said Barbara, with a sceptical note in her voice.
"All the possible definitions of beauty apply also to life; life and beauty are one and the same thing."
Barbara demurred at this.
But, after all, the somewhat grim-looking family which she adduced as refutation were really not exactly alive in any serious sense of the word. Truly living people are always in some way beautiful. I left her pondering this risky statement while I prudently hastened on.
Our gallant author seemed to see things after a fashion of his own. One might, of course, summarily dismiss it as sentimentalism, but that would be meaningless, for our whole life is founded on sentiment of one kind and another. It is monstrous without it.
"He seems to think sentiment very important; more so than most men do," said Barbara, whose male relatives were mostly of a solid order.