"'I suppose,' he was saying, 'that nobody can tell just what it is in some scenes or objects that makes them esthetic stimuli for certain individuals. Basically, of course, it must have some reference to each man's background of stored-up mental associations; for no two people have the same scale of sensitiveness and responses. For some of us all ordinary things have ceased to have any emotional or imaginative significance, but no one responds in the same way to exactly the same extraordinary thing. Now take me, for instance....
"'I know, Denny, that I can say these things to you because you have such a preternaturally unspoiled mind—clean, objective, and all that. You won't misunderstand. The fact is, I think I know what's needed to set my imagination working again. I've had a dim idea of it ever since we were in Paris, but I'm sure now. It's Marceline, old chap; that face and that hair, and the train of shadowy images they bring up. Not merely visible beauty—though God knows there's enough of that—but something peculiar and individualized, that can't exactly be explained. Do you know, in the last few days I've felt the existence of such a stimulus so keenly that I honestly think I could outdo myself, if I could get hold of paint and canvas at just the time when her face and hair set my fancy stirring and weaving.
"'There is something weird and other-worldly about it, something joined up with the dim ancient thing Marceline represents. I don't know how much she's told you about that side of her, but I can assure you there's plenty to it. She has some marvelous links with the outside.'
"Some change in Denis' expression must have halted the speaker here, for there was a considerable spell of silence before the words went on. I was utterly taken aback, for I'd expected no such overt development as this, and I wondered what my son could be thinking. My heart began to pound violently, and I strained my ears in the frankest of intentional eavesdropping. Then Marsh resumed.
"'Of course you're jealous—I know how a speech like mine must sound—but I can swear to you that you needn't be.'
"Denis did not answer, and Marsh went on.
"'To tell the truth, I could never be in love with Marceline—I couldn't even be a cordial friend of hers in the warmest sense. Why, damn it all, I feel like a hypocrite talking with her these days as I've been doing.
"'The case simply is, that one phase of her half hypnotizes me in a certain way—a very strange, fantastic, and dimly terrible way—just as another phase half hypnotizes you in a much more normal way. I see something in her—or to be psychologically exact, something through her or beyond her—that you don't see at all; something that brings up a vast pageantry of shapes from forgotten abysses, and makes me want to paint incredible things whose outlines vanish the instant I try to envisage them clearly. Don't mistake, Denny: your wife is a magnificent being, a splendid focus of cosmic forces who has a right to be called divine if anything on earth has!'
"I felt a clearing of the situation at this point, for the abstract strangeness of Marsh's expressed sentiment, plus the flattery he was now heaping on Marceline, could not fail to disarm and mollify one as fondly proud of his consort as Denis always was. Marsh evidently caught the change himself, for there was more confidence in his tone as he continued.
"'I must paint her, Denny, must paint that hair, and you won't regret it. There's something more than mortal about that hair, something more than beautiful——'