nt: he had no
notion what he meant, Clutton had no gift of expression in words, and he
spoke as though it were an effort. What he had to say was confused,
halting, and verbose; but Philip knew the words which served as the text
of his rambling discourse. Clutton, who never read, had heard them first
from Cronshaw; and though they had made small impression, they had
remained in his memory; and lately, emerging on a sudden, had acquired the
character of a revelation: a good painter had two chief objects to paint,
namely, man and the intention of his soul. The Impressionists had been
occupied with other problems, they had painted man admirably, but they had
troubled themselves as little as the English portrait painters of the
eighteenth century with the intention of his soul.

"But when you try to get that you become literary," said Lawson,
interrupting. "Let me paint the man like Manet, and the intention of his
soul can go to the devil."

"That would be all very well if you could beat Manet at his own game, but
you can't get anywhere near him. You can't feed yourself on the day before
yesterday, it's ground which has been swept dry. You must go back. It's
when I saw the Grecos that I felt one could get something more out of
portraits than we knew before."

"It's just going back to Ruskin," cried Lawson.

"No--you see, he went for morality: I don't care a damn for morality:
teaching doesn't come in, ethics and all that, but passion and emotion.
The greatest portrait painters have painted both, man and the intention of
his soul; Rembrandt and El Greco; it's only the second-raters who've only
painted man. A lily of the valley would be lovely even if it didn't smell,
but it's more lovely because it has perfume. That picture"--he pointed to
Lawson's portrait--"well, the drawing's all right and so's the modelling
all right, but just conventional; it ought to be drawn and modelled so
that you know the girl's a lousy slut. Correctness is all very well: El
Greco made his people eight feet high because he wanted to express
something he couldn't get any other way."

"Damn El Greco," said Lawson, "what's the good of jawing about a man when
we haven't a chance of seeing any of his work?"

Clutton shrugged his shoulders, smoked a cigarette in silence, and went
away. Philip and Lawson looked at one another.

"There's something in what he says," said Philip.

Lawson stared ill-temperedly at his picture.

"How the devil is one t