I mean no disparagement of your work, Kew, or
any artist's work; but I can't endure Art except in winter, when
everything (almost) must be artificial to be endurable. A winter may
come in one's life--I wonder if it will?--when one would rather look at
the picture of a woman than at the woman herself. Meantime I no more
need pictures than I need fires; I warm both hands and heart at the fire
of life."
"Ah!" said Kew, with a wistful lack of comprehension.
"That's why I believe," said Courtney, with a sudden turn of reflection,
"there is in warm countries no Art of our small domestic kind."
"Just so," said Kew; while Dingley Dell, the Art critic, made a note of
Courtney's words.
"Look here!" exclaimed Dr. Embro, an old scientific man of Scottish
extraction, who, in impatience with such transcendental talk, had taken
up 'The St. James's Gazette.' "What do you make of this queer case at
the Hotel-Dieu in Paris? I see it's taken from 'The Daily Telegraph;'"
and he began to read it.
"Oh," said Kew, "we all read that this morning."
"Dr. Embro," said Courtney, again looking idly out of window, "is like a
French journal: full of the news of the day before yesterday.
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