"What!"
"Certainly. As far as you have lived. Now live a little more, and let more things come into your life. You can't paint what isn't in you; and there's nothing in you except what you get out of life."
She laid her soft cheek against his.
"Get a little real love out of life, Louis; a little real love. Then surely, surely your canvases can not disguise that you know what life means to us all. Love nobly; and the world will not doubt that love is noble; love mercifully; and the world will understand mercy. For I believe that what you are must show in your work, dear.
"Until now the world has seen in your work only the cold splendour, or dreamy glamour, or the untroubled sweetness and brilliancy of passionless romance. I love your work. It is happiness to look at it; it thrills, bewitches, enthralls!… Dear, forgive me if in it I have not yet found a deeper inspiration…. And that inspiration, to be there, must be first in you, my darling—born of a wider interest in your fellow men, a little tenderness for friends—a more generous experience and more real sympathy with humanity—and perhaps you may think it out of place for me to say it—but—a deeper, truer, spiritual conviction.
"Do you think it strange of me to have such convictions? I can't escape them. Those who are merciful, those who are kind, to me are Christ-like. Nothing else matters. But to be kind is to be first of all interested in the happiness of others. And you care nothing for people. You must care, Louis!
"And, somehow, you who are, at heart, good and kind and merciful, have not really awakened real love in many of those about you. For one thing your work has absorbed you. But if, at the same time, you could pay a little more attention to human beings—"
"Valerie!" he said in astonishment, "I have plenty of friends. Do you mean to say I care nothing for them?"
"How much do you care, Louis?"
"Why, I—" He fell silent, troubled gaze searching hers.