foundly the subtle compliment pleased her.

Because a man's or a woman's intimate personal taste is good
it by no means follows that he or she will build or decorate
or furnish a house well. In matters of taste, the greater
does not necessarily include the less, nor does the less imply
the greater. Perhaps Susan would have shown she did not
deserve Brent's compliment, would have failed ignominiously in
that first essay of hers, had she not found a Gourdain,
sympathetic, able to put into the concrete the rather vague
ideas she had evolved in her dreaming. An architect is like
a milliner or a dressmaker. He supplies the model, product of
his own individual taste. The person who employs him must
remold that form into an expression of his own
personality--for people who deliberately live in surroundings
that are not part of themselves are on the same low level with
those who utter only borrowed ideas. That is the object and
the aim of civilization--to encourage and to compel each
individual to be frankly himself--herself. That is the
profound meaning of freedom. The world owes more to bad
morals and to bad taste that are spontaneous than to all the
docile conformity to the standards of morals and of taste,
however good. Truth--which simply means an increase of
harmony, a decrease of discord, between the internal man and
his environment--truth is a product, usually a byproduct, of
a ferment of action.

Gourdain--chiefly, no doubt, because Susan's beauty of face
and figure and dress fascinated him--was more eager to bring
out her individuality than to show off his own talents. He
took endless pains with her, taught her the technical
knowledge and vocabulary that would enable her to express
herself, then carried out her ideas religiously. "You are
right, _mon ami_," said he to Brent. "She is an orchid, and of
a rare species. She has a glorious imagination, like a bird
of paradise balancing itself into an azure sky, with every
plume raining color and brilliancy."

"Somewhat exaggerated," was Susan's pleased, laughing comment
when Brent told her.

"Somewhat," said Brent. "But my friend Gourdain is stark mad
about women's dressing well. That lilac dress you had on
yesterday did for him. He _was_ your servant; he _is_ your slave."

Abruptly--for no apparent cause, as was often the case--Susan
had that sickening sense of the unreality of her luxurious
present, of being about to awaken in Vine Street with E