'Yes; truth of form, colour, chiaroscuro. They are worthy to occupy me a life; for they are eternal--or at least that which they express: and if I am to get at the symbolised unseen, it must be through the beauty of the symbolising phenomenon. If I, who live by art, for art, in art, or you either, who seem as much a born artist as myself, am to have a religion, it must be a worship of the fountain of art--of the "Spirit of beauty, who doth consecrate With his own hues whate'er he shines upon."' 'As poor Shelley has it; and much peace of mind it gave him!' answered Lancelot. 'I have grown sick lately of such dreary tinsel abstractions. When you look through the glitter of the words, your "spirit of beauty" simply means certain shapes and colours which please you in beautiful things and in beautiful people.' 'Vile nominalist! renegade from the ideal and all its glories!' said Claude, laughing. 'I don't care sixpence now for the ideal! I want not beauty, but some beautiful thing--a woman perhaps,' and he sighed. 'But at least a person--a living, loving person--all lovely itself, and giving loveliness to all things! If I must have an ideal, let it be, for mercy's sake, a realised one.' Claude opened his sketch-book. 'We shall get swamped in these metaphysical oceans, my dear dreamer. But lo, here come a couple, as near ideals as any in these degenerate days--the two poles of beauty: the milieu of which would be Venus with us Pagans, or the Virgin Mary with the Catholics. Look at them! Honoria the dark--symbolic of passionate depth; Argemone the fair, type of intellectual light! Oh, that I were a Zeuxis to unite them instead of having to paint them in two separate pictures, and split perfection in half, as everything is split in this piecemeal world!' 'You will have the honour of a sitting this afternoon, I suppose, from both beauties?' 'I hope so, for my own sake. There is no path left to immortality, or bread either, now for us poor artists but portrait-painting.' 'I envy you your path, when it leads through such Elysiums,' said Lancelot. 'Come here, gentlemen both!' cried Argemone from the bridge. 'Fairly caught!' grumbled Lancelot. 'You must go, at least; my lameness will excuse me, I hope.' The two ladies were accompanied by Bracebridge, a gazelle which he had given Argemone, and a certain miserable cur of Honoria's adopting, who plays an important part in this story, and, therefore, deserves a little notice. Honoria had rescued him from a watery death in the village pond, by means of the colonel, who had revenged himself for a pair of wet feet by utterly corrupting the dog's morals, and teaching him every week to answer to some fresh scandalous name.