Contrasts are enough to
knock you down. This gray, Eastern studio light makes all my sketches
seem false, but I know they are not."

"They are very true, it seems to me."

"When I close my eyes and hark back to the flooding light of the valley
of the Elk, then I can do these things; I can't if I don't. I have to
forget all my other pictures. This is nearer my impression than anything
else I've done."

"It has great charm," he said, after a pause, "and it also reminds me of
my duty. I must return at once to the West."

"When do you go--actually?"

"Actually, I leave to-morrow at three o'clock; unless I receive word to
the contrary, to-morrow morning."

"So soon? You are making a very short stay. Can't you remain over the
holidays? Some friends of mine are coming on from New York. I'd like
you to meet them."

"I think I must return. Jennie is preparing to give her little 'Ingines'
a Christmas-tree, and I am told that my 'Sandy Claws' would add greatly
to their joy, so I am making special effort to reach there on the 23d."

She looked at him musingly. "You really are interested in those ugly
creatures? I don't understand it."

"To be really frank, I don't understand your lack of sympathy," he
replied, smiling a little. "It isn't at all feminine."

She took a seat on the divan before she spoke again. "Oh, women are such
posers. You think I am quite heartless, don't you?"

"No, I don't think that, but I do think you are a little unjust to these
people, whose thought you have made very little effort to comprehend."

"Why should I? They are not worth while."

"Do you speak now as an artist?" he asked, gravely.

"But they are so gross and so cruel!"

"I don't deny but they are, sometimes, both gross and cruel, but so are
civilized men. The scalp-dance no more represents them than a bayonet
charge represents us. It isn't just to condemn all for the faults of a
few. You wouldn't destroy servant-girls because some of them are ugly
and untidy, would you?"

"The cases are not precisely similar."

"I'll admit that, but the point is here: as an artist you can't afford
to dispose of a race on the testimony of their hereditary enemies. You
wouldn't expect a sympathetic study of the Greek by the Saracen, would
you?"

"It isn't that so much, but they are so perfectly unimportant. They have
no use in the world. What does it matter if they die, or don't?"

"Perhaps not so much to them; but to me, if I can help them a