g to be caught again. One lapse into artistic fervour
was enough for me. Even at the risk of offending Mrs. Ascher beyond
forgiveness, I was determined to preserve my self-respect.

"I wish you wouldn't take my word for it's being good," I said. "Ask
somebody who knows. The fact that I like it is a proof that it's bad,
bad art, if it's a proof of anything. I never really admire anything
good, can't bear, simply can't bear old masters, or"--I dimly
recollected some witty essays by my brilliant fellow-countryman Mr.
George Moore--"I detest Corot. My favourite artist is Leader."

Mrs. Ascher smiled all the time I was speaking.

"I know quite well," she said, "that my work isn't good. But you saw
what I meant by it. You can't deny it now, and you know that the boy is
like that."

"I don't know anything of the sort. I don't know anything at all about
him. The only time I ever came into touch with him he was helping his
brother to persuade Mr. Ascher to go into a doubtful--well, to make
money by what I'd call sharp practice."

"I don't think he was," said Mrs. Ascher. "The elder brother may have
been doing what you say; but Tim wasn't."

"He was in the game," I said.

I spoke all the more obstinately because I knew that Tim was not in the
game, I was determined not to be hysterical again.

"I've had that poor boy here day after day," said Mrs. Ascher, "and I
really know him. He has the soul of an artist. He is a creator. He is
one of humanity's mother natures. You know how it is with us. Something
quickens in us. We travail and bring to the birth."

Mrs. Ascher evidently included herself among the mother natures. It
seemed a pity that she had not gone about the business in the ordinary
way. I think she would have been happier if she had. However, the head
of Tim Gorman was something. She had produced it.

"That is art," she said dreamily, "conception, gestation, travail,
birth. It does not matter whether the thing born is a poem, a picture, a
statue, a sonata, a temple----"

"Or a cash register," I said.

The thing born might apparently be anything except an ordinary baby. The
true artist does not think much of babies. They are bourgeois things.

"Or a cash register," she said. "It makes no difference. The man who
creates, who brings into being, has only one desire, that his child,
whatever it may be, shall live. If it is stifled, killed, a sword goes
through his heart."

It seemed to me even then with Mrs. A