Although she didn't understand a word of this, Linda liked to hear him; he was talking as though she were grown up, and in response to the flattery she was magnetic and eager. “One time,” he said, “very long ago, beauty was worshiped. Men, you see, know better now. They want their dollar's worth. The world was absolutely different then--there were deep adventurous forests with holy chapels in the green combe for an orison, and hermits rising to Paradise on the _Te Deum Laudamus_ of the angels and archangels. There were black castles and, in the broad meadows, silk tents with ivory pegs and poles of gold. “The enchantments were as thick as shadows under the trees: perhaps the loveliest of women riding a snow-white mule, with a saddle cloth of red samite, or, wrapped in her shining hair, on a leopard with yellow eyes, lured you to a pavilion, scattered with rushes and flowers and magical herbs, and a shameful end. Or a silver doe would weep, begging you to pierce her with your sword, and, when you did, there knelt the daughter of the King of Wales. “But I started to tell you about the worship of beauty. Plato started it although Cardinal Pietro Bembo was responsible for the creed. He lived in Italy, in an age like a lily. It developed mostly at Florence in the Platonic Academy of Cosomo and Pico della Mirandola. Love was the supreme force, and its greatest expression a desire beyond the body.” He gazed at Linda with a quizzical light in his eyes deep in shadow. “Love,” he said again, and then paused. “One set of words will do as well as another. You will understand, or not, with something far different from intellectual comprehension. The endless service of beauty. Of course, a woman--but never the animal; the spirit always. Born in the spirit, served in the spirit, ending in the spirit. A direct contradiction, you see, to nature and common sense, frugality and the sacred symbol of the dollar. “It wouldn't please your Mr. Jasper, with his heaps and heaps of money. Mr. Jasper would consider himself sold. But Novalis, not so very long ago, understood.... A dead girl more real than all earth. You mustn't suppose it to be mere mysticism.” Linda said, “Very well, I won't.” He nodded. “No one could call Michelangelo hysterical. Sometime in the history of man, of a salt solution, this divinity has touched them. Touched them hopefully, and perhaps gone--banished by the other destination. Or I can comprehend nature killing it relentlessly, since it didn't lead to propagation. Then, too, as much as was useful was turned into a dogma for politics and priests.