ested in him,
although Mr. Summers Bass was not her idea of an imaginative writer. He
was a stout young gentleman, with very black hair and small black eyes,
to which it was difficult to give a melancholy cast even by an habitual
frown. Mr. Bass dressed himself scrupulously in the fashion, was very
exact in his pronunciation, careful about his manner, and had the air of
a little weariness, of the responsibility of one looking at life. It was
only at rare moments that his face expressed intensity of feeling.

"It is a very pretty scene. I suppose, Mr. Bass, that you are making
studies," said Margaret, by way of opening a conversation.

"No; hardly that. One must always observe. It gets to be a habit. The
thing is to see reality under appearances."

"Then you would call yourself a realist?"

Mr. Bass smiled. "That is a slang term, Mrs. Henderson. What you want is
nature, color, passion--to pierce the artificialities."

"But you must describe appearance."

"Certainly, to an extent--form, action, talk as it is, even
trivialities--especially the trivialities, for life is made up of the
trivial."

"But suppose that does not interest me?"

"Pardon me, Mrs. Henderson, that is because you are used to the
conventional, the selected. Nature is always interesting."

"I do not find it so."

"No? Nature has been covered up; it has been idealized. Look yonder,"
and Mr. Bass pointed across the lawn. "See that young woman upon whom
the sunlight falls standing waiting her turn. See the quivering of the
eyelids, the heaving of the chest, the opening lips; note the curve of
her waist from the shoulder, and the line rounding into the fall of the
folds of the Austrian cashmere. I try to saturate myself with that form,
to impress myself with her every attitude and gesture, her color, her
movement, and then I shall imagine the form under the influence of
passion. Every detail will tell. I do not find unimportant the tie of
her shoe. The picture will be life."

"But suppose, Mr. Bass, when you come to speak with her, you find that
she has no ideas, and talks slang."

"All the better. It shows what we are, what our society is. And besides,
Mrs. Henderson, nearly everybody has the capacity of being wicked; that
is to say, of expressing emotion."

"You take a gloomy view, Mr. Bass."

"I take no view, Mrs. Henderson. My ambition is to record. It will not
help matters by pretending that people are better than they are."

"Well, Mr