nd
lamps and easels are unimportant to you--you won't miss them; to me they
will be priceless, and, besides, you may come back again some time. Say
you will. It will comfort me."

There was a light in his eyes and an intensity in his voice which
startled her. She stammered a little.

"Why, of course, if it will give you the slightest pleasure; there is
nothing here of any particular value. I'll be glad to leave them."

"Thank you. So long as I have this room as it is I shall be able to
persuade myself that you have not passed utterly out of my life."

She was a little alarmed now, and hastened to say: "I do not see why we
should not meet again. I shall expect you to call when you come to
Washington--" she checked herself. "I'm afraid my sense of duty to the
Tetongs is not strong. Don't think too hardly of me because of it."

He seemed intent on another thought. "Do you know, you've given me a dim
notion of a new philosophy. I haven't organized it yet, but it's
something like this: Beauty is a sense of fitness, harmony. This sense
of beauty--call it taste--demands positively a readjustment of the
external facts of life, so that all angles, all suffering and violence,
shall cease. If all men were lovers of the beautiful, the gentle, then
the world would needs be suave and genial, and life harmoniously
colored, like your own studio, and we would campaign only against
ugliness. To civilize would mean a totally different thing. I'm not
quite clear on my theory yet, but perhaps you can help me out."

"I think I see what you mean. But my world," she hastened to say, "is
nothing like so blameless as you think it. Don't think artists are
actually what they should be. They are very human, eager to succeed, to
outstrip each other; and they are sordid, too. No, you are too kind to
us. We are a poor lot when you take us as a whole, and the worst of it
is the cleverest makers of the beautiful are often the least inspiring
in their lives. I mean they're ignorant and spiteful, and often
dishonorable." She stopped abruptly.

"I'm sorry to hear you say that. It certainly shatters a beautiful
theory I had built up out of what you and other artists have said to
me." After a little silence he resumed: "It comes down to this, then:
that all arts and professions are a part of life, and life is a
compromise between desire and duty. There are certain things I want to
do to-day, but my duties for to-morrow forbid. You are right in going