"What do you mean to say? Novelists and dramatists describe the emotions, the passions of the soul. To uncover the heart and uncover the body are two vastly different things. Add to that, in England on the stage, if not in the novel, that virtue triumphs invariably." "Yes, but at what cost? Firstly, often at the expense of insulting one's common-sense; but that is the fault of a public that insists on being sent home, perfectly convinced that the hero and heroine still henceforth live happily ever after. That is not the worst of it. Before seeing the triumph of virtue, often an impossible kind of virtue, one must assist at the heartrending dissection of a woman's soul. All the deformities of her heart are laid bare. I suppose you call that realism too, I call it clinical surgery--that is to say, my dear friend, that modern fiction exhales a strong odour of carbolic acid. Ah, I must say I prefer a picture in which a woman is presented in all her beauty of form and colour, to a novel or a play, in which we see woman represented as impure, corrupted" ... "I told you that you would be beaten, Lorimer. Own yourself vanquished." "My dear madam," said Lorimer, "you preach to a convert. But I must remind you that converting the British public is not my rôle. I serve up to that worthy public, which has always been kind to me, the dish of its predilection. We cannot always put on the stage Pauls and Virginias, who, moreover, are getting rarer every day, as you will admit." "Virginias, especially," said Philip, in parenthesis. "Oh, that's another thing," exclaimed Dora almost indignantly; "you work, you turn out dramatic literature, for what it brings you in; own it at once--to make money! That is modern art, the art of making ten thousand a year. Some are writers, some are green-grocers; you put them all in the same category. Under these conditions, I do not see why Philip should not accept offers to paint advertisements for manufacturers of soaps and hair restorers." "But, my dear friend," said Lorimer, "some of our greatest academicians have accepted such commissions with the most satisfactory results." "Oh, hold your tongue, you are incorrigible!" said Dora, laughing. Philip saw that it was time to put a stop to the conversation that threatened to get too heated, and proposed a smoke in the studio. Dora did not go with them; she made a solemn bow to Lorimer; and all three burst out laughing and separated the best of friends. Philip and Lorimer lit their cigars, the latter without taking his eyes off the portrait of Dora, which he thought a splendid likeness and perfect in colouring and modelling. "Ah, my dear friend, what a wife you have! What a companion for an artist! Upon my word, if I were married to such a woman, I believe I could write masterpieces." Philip hardly heeded him. He paced up and down the studio, looking at the clock, then at the door, and starting at every sound he heard in the street.