I'd let you ride to hell on
your own palette, and be damned to you. But this thing shows a power that
the world can ill afford to lose. It is so bad because it is so good. Come
here!" he drew his friend to the big window, and pointed to the mountains.
"There is an art like those mountains, my boy--lonely, apart from the
world; remotely above the squalid ambitions of men; Godlike in its calm
strength and peace--an art to which men may look for inspiration and
courage and hope. And there is an art that is like Fairlands--petty and
shallow and mean--with only the fictitious value that its devotees assume,
but never, actually, realize. Listen, Aaron, don't continue to misread
your mother's letters. Don't misunderstand her as thinking that the place
she coveted for you is a place within the power of these people to give.
Come with me into the mountains, yonder. Come, and let us see if, in those
hills of God, you cannot find yourself."
When Conrad Lagrange finished, the artist stood, for a little, without
reply--irresolute, before his picture--the check in his hand. At last,
still without speaking, he went back to the table, where he wrote briefly
his reply to Mr. Taine. When he had finished, he handed his letter to the
older man, who read:
Dear Sir:
In reply to yours of the 13th, inst.
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