d modern types, passing him
and leaving him untouched. There is no illusion, and no dreaming, in
modern life. Look at this street. La, la!"

In the darkened Strand, hundreds of khaki-clad figures and girls were
streaming by, and all their voices had a hard, half-jovial vulgarity. The
motor-cabs and buses pushed along remorselessly; newspaper-sellers
muttered their ceaseless invitations. Again the painter made his gesture
of despair: "How am I to get into my picture this modern life, which
washes round him as round that church, there, standing in the middle of
the street? See how the currents sweep round it, as if to wash it away;
yet it stands, seeming not to see them. If I were a phantasist, it would
be easy enough: but to be a phantasist is too simple for me--those
romantic gentlemen bring what they like from anywhere, to serve their
ends. Moi, je suis realiste. And so, monsieur, I have invented an idea.
I am painting over his head while he sits there at the piano a picture
hanging on the wall--of one of these young town girls who have no
mysteriousness at all, no youth; nothing but a cheap knowledge and
defiance, and good humour. He is looking up at it, but he does not see
it. I will make the face of that girl the face of modern life, and he
shall sit staring at it, seeing nothing. What do you think of my idea?"

But Fort had begun to feel something of the revolt which the man of
action so soon experiences when he listens to an artist talking.

"It sounds all right," he said abruptly; "all the same, monsieur, all my
sympathy is with modern life. Take these young girls, and these Tommies.
For all their feather-pated vulgarity and they are damned vulgar, I must
say--they're marvellous people; they do take the rough with the smooth;
they're all 'doing their bit,' you know, and facing this particularly
beastly world. Aesthetically, I daresay, they're deplorable, but can you
say that on the whole their philosophy isn't an advance on anything we've
had up till now? They worship nothing, it's true; but they keep their
ends up marvellously."

The painter, who seemed to feel the wind blowing cold on his ideas,
shrugged his shoulders.

"I am not concerned with that, monsieur; I set down what I see; better or
worse, I do not know. But look at this!" And he pointed down the
darkened and moonlit street. It was all jewelled and enamelled with
little spots and splashes of subdued red and green-blue light, and t