“What did you think of them?” I asked her, smiling.
“They were awful.”
“Ah, sweetheart, you don’t understand.”
“Well, your Dutch people were furious with you. They thought you were having a joke with them.”
Dirk Stroeve took off his spectacles and wiped them. His flushed face was shining with excitement.
“Why should you think that beauty, which is the most precious thing in the world, lies like a stone on the beach for the careless passer-by to pick up idly? Beauty is something wonderful and strange that the artist fashions out of the chaos of the world in the torment of his soul. And when he has made it, it is not given to all to know it. To recognize it you must repeat the adventure of the artist. It is a melody that he sings to you, and to hear it again in your own heart you want knowledge and sensitiveness and imagination.”
“Why did I always think your pictures beautiful, Dirk? I admired them the very first time I saw them.”
Stroeve’s lips trembled a little.
“Go to bed, my precious. I will walk a few steps with our friend, and then I will come back.”