"If you allow for the singular, obscene ugliness of his imagination, yes."
"It's beautiful enough when he gets it into paint," she said. "He makes beauty. His own beauty."
"Oh, very much his own."
"Well, you just go on imitating other people's—God's or somebody's."
She continued with her air of perfect reasonableness. "I know he isn't good-looking. Not half so good-looking as you are. But I like him. I like his slender little body and his clever, faded face. There's a quality about him, a distinction. And look at his eyes. Your mind doesn't come rushing and blazing out of your eyes, my dear."
"No. No. I'm afraid it doesn't rush. And for all the blaze—"
"Well, that's what I'm in love with, the rush, Roly, and the blaze. And I'm in love, for the first time" (she underlined it) "with a man."
"Come," I said, "come."
"Oh, I know. I know you're thinking of Lawson Young and Dickey Harper."
I was.