ESTELLA: My dear Sophy; you misunderstand me. I can easily distinguish between what is real and what is merely artistic. And criticism fails, I know, if one carries into it the feelings one had in life. What stirred me here so deeply was the really perfect representation of a deep problem of life. I was once again able to realize clearly how art can only mount to such heights, when it keeps close to the fulness of life. As soon as it departs therefrom, its works are untrue. SOPHIA: I understand you perfectly when you speak like that. I have always admired the artists who could represent what you call the reality of life. And I believe a great many have that power,--especially nowadays. Nevertheless even the very highest attainments leave behind them in my soul a certain discomfort. For a long time I was unable to explain this to myself, but one day the light came that brought the answer. ESTELLA: You mean to tell me, that your conception of the world has dispelled your appreciation of so-called realistic art? SOPHIA: Dear Estelle, let us not speak of my conception of the world today. You know quite well, that the emotion you have just described was entirely familiar to me long before I knew anything at all about what you call my 'conception of the world.' And these feelings are not only aroused in me with reference to so-called realistic art: but other things also create a similar feeling in me. It grows especially marked when I become aware of what I might call, in a higher sense, the want of truth in certain works of art. ESTELLA: There I really cannot follow you. SOPHIA: A vivid grasp of real truth must needs create in the heart a sense of a certain poverty in works of art. For of course the greatest artist is always a novice compared with nature in her perfection. The most accomplished artist fails to give me what I can get from the revelation of a landscape or a human countenance. ESTELLA: But that is in the nature of the case and cannot be altered.