"That's strange," said Stanton with mock gravity. "Were I not afraid you would take it amiss I would hint that your ears are of goodly size. How comes it that they have so suddenly failed you?" "Having seen your dinner you have no eyes for anything else. If you had, you would have seen a face near us." "I saw a score of faces near us. A German had one with the area of an acre." "Was he the one who said, 'hist,' like a blast from the North?" "From a porpoise rather." "Did you observe the girl towards whom his gusty rebuke was directed?" "Yes, an inoffensive young lady." "Inoffensive, indeed!" interrupted Van Berg. "She has put me into purgatory." "You do seem quite ablaze. Well, you are not the first one that she has put there. But really, Van, I did not know that you were so inflammable." "If you had any of the instincts of an artist you would know that I am inflamed with no gentler feeling than anger." "Why! what has the poor child done to you?" "She is not a child. She knows too much about some things." "I've no doubt she is better than either you or I," said Stanton, sharply. "That fact would be far from proving her a saint." "What the dickens makes you so vindictive against the girl?" "Because she has the features of an angel and the face of a fool. What business has a woman to mock and disappoint one so! When I first saw her I thought I had discovered a prize--a new revelation of beauty; but a moment later she looked so ineffably silly that I felt as if I had bitten into an apple of Sodom. Of course the girl is nothing to me. I never saw her before and hope I may never see her again; but her features were so perfect that I could not help looking at them, and the more I looked the more annoyed I became to find that, instead of being blended together into a divine face by the mind within, they were the reluctant slaves of as picayune a soul as ever maintained its microscopic existence in a human body. It is exasperating to think what that face might be, and to see what it is. How can nature make such absurd blunders? The idea of building so fair a temple for such an ugly little divinity!" "I thought you artists were satisfied with flesh and blood women, if only put together in a way pleasing to your fastidious eyes." "If nature had designed that women should consist only of flesh and blood women, if only put together in a way pleasing to your fastidious eyes." "If nature had designed that women should consist only of flesh and blood, one would have to be content; but no one save the 'unspeakable Turk,' believes in such a woman, or wants her. Who admires such a fragment of a woman save the man that is as yet undeveloped beyond the animal? My mother is my friend, my companion, my inspiration. The idea of yonder silly creature being the companion of a MAN."