"Be it so," he replied. "I did not wish to inflict myself unduly. Art should be sensitive. Do you not agree with me, Miss Harlan?"
"How exquisite!" I heard Miss Kingsley whisper to Mr. Fleisch, with whom she was standing a few feet distant gazing at the master.
It was Mr. Paul Barr who answered the question for me:—
"No, Miss Harlan, Art should be aggressive; Art should be ardent. I do not agree with Mr. Spence. In fact, we never agree upon any subject. But we are friends, life-long, bosom friends. Shake, Charles, shake! we have not given the grip and pressure of amity to-night."
He spoke in a deep, sonorous base, and extended to his friend a hirsute hand.
"It is true we belong to different schools, Mr. Barr and I, Miss Harlan," said Mr. Spence. "He believes in the supremacy of the untrammelled, as his poems and pictures show; I, on the contrary, give my voice to equipoise. But, as he has well said, we are devoted friends."
"You shall judge between us," continued Paul Barr addressing me. "Which is better, the free undulation of self, or eternal tension?"
"A fine antithesis," murmured Miss Kingsley.
"Mein Gott! but it is not true, that free undulation of self. It deceives, it deludes: it is a—what word is it I am seeking?—a—eh—I have it,—boomerang,—a boomerang that plagues the inventor," said Mr. Fleisch.
"Refuted, well refuted!" said Mr. Spence. "Fleisch has hit the mark. The overmuch is indeed a boomerang. Thanks, Bernard, for the epigram," he added, turning to the little German.