“I like that,” she said. “You ought to have powdered hair and a sword.” “I apologize,” he said gravely, “no modern man is worthy of you. But indeed I fear, in every sense I am not a very modern man.” “You must never wear that hat again,” she said, indicating the battered original topper. “To tell the truth,” he observed mildly, “I had not any attention of resuming that one.” “Silly,” she said briefly, “I don’t mean that hat; I mean that sort of hat. As a matter of fact, there couldn’t be a finer hat than the cabbage.” “My dear--” he protested; but she was looking at him quite seriously. “I told you I was an artist, and didn’t know much about literature,” she said. “Well, do you know, it really does make a difference. Literary people let words get between them and things. We do at least look at the things and not the names of the things. You think a cabbage is comic because the name sounds comic and even vulgar; something between ‘cab’ and ‘garbage,’ I suppose. But a cabbage isn’t really comic or vulgar. You wouldn’t think so if you simply had to paint it. Haven’t you seen Dutch and Flemish galleries, and don’t you know what great men painted cabbages? What they saw was certain lines and colours; very wonderful lines and colours.” “It may be all very well in a picture,” he began doubtfully. She suddenly laughed aloud. “You idiot,” she cried; “don’t you know you looked perfectly splendid? The curves were like a great turban of leaves and the root rose like the spike of a helmet; it was rather like the turbaned helmets on some of Rembrandt’s figures, with the face like bronze in the shadows of green and purple. That’s the sort of thing artists can see, who keep their eyes and heads clear of words! And then you want to apologize for not wearing that stupid stovepipe covered with blacking, when you went about wearing a coloured crown like a king. And you were like a king in this country; for they were all afraid of you.” As he continued a faint protest, her laughter took on a more mischievous shade. “If you’d stuck to it a little longer, I swear they’d all have been wearing vegetables for hats. I swear I saw my cousin the other day standing with a sort of trowel, and looking irresolutely at a cabbage.” Then, after a pause, she said with a beautiful irrelevancy: “What was it Mr. Hood did that you said he couldn’t do?” But these are tales of topsy-turvydom even in the sense that they have to be told tail-foremost. And he who would know the answer to that question must deliver himself up to the intolerable tedium of reading the story of The Improbable Success of Mr. Owen Hood, and an interval must be allowed him before such torments are renewed. II THE IMPROBABLE SUCCESS OF MR. OWEN HOOD II THE IMPROBABLE SUCCESS OF MR. OWEN HOOD