“We 're in the middle of the first act, just before my exit,” said the latter.
John became aware, as he listened, that Herold was sketching the piece in which he was playing, a fragrant comedy full of delicate sentiment and humour. His own scenes he acted in full, taking all the parts. Stella lay entranced, and fixed on him glorious eyes of wonder. How could he do it? At one astonishing moment he was a young girl, at another her sailor sweetheart, at another a palsied, mumbling old man. And when, as the old man, he took the weeping girl under his arm and hobbled away on his stick, leaving the young fellow baffled and disappointed, it seemed an optical illusion, so vivid was the picture. He recrossed the room, smiling, the real Walter Herold again; Stella clapped her hands.
“Is n't he perfectly lovely!”
“Stunning,” said John, who had often witnessed similar histrionic exhibitions in that room, and had always been impressed with their exquisite art. “I wish you could see the real thing, dear.”
Stella glanced out to sea for a moment and glanced back at him.
“I don't think I do,” she said. “It would be too real.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Herold clapped John on the shoulder. “Can't you see what a subtle little artistic soul she has?” he cried enthusiastically. “She has evolved for herself the fundamental truth, the vital essence of all art—suggestion. She means that, in order that the proper harmony should be established between the artist and the person to whom he is making his appeal, the latter must go a certain way to meet him. He must exercise his imagination, too, on the same lines. The measure of your appreciation, say, of Turner, is the length of the imaginative journey you make toward him. When a thing needs no imaginative effort to get hold of it, it's not a work of art. You have n't got to go half way to the housemaid to realize a slice of bread and butter. That's where so-called realism fails. Stella 's' afraid that if she saw us all in flesh and blood on the stage, nothing would be left to her imagination. She's right in essence.”
Stella smiled on him gratefully. “That 's exactly how I feel, but I could n't have expressed it. How do you manage to know all these funny things that go on inside me?”
“I wish I did,” said Herold, with a touch of wistfulness.