ise, you can qualify, you can measure, explain, account for: this
you can only love and admire. I don't know in what seeming he walked
among men while this divine mood was upon him; but after it, surely, he
could do nothing but die; this world had nothing more to teach him. Think
of it a while, my friend, and you will admit that I am not raving. Think
of his seeing that spotless image, not for a moment, for a day, in a
happy dream, or a restless fever-fit; not as a poet in a five minutes'
frenzy--time to snatch his phrase and scribble his immortal stanza; but
for days together, while the slow labour of the brush went on, while the
foul vapours of life interposed, and the fancy ached with tension, fixed,
radiant, distinct, as we see it now! What a master, certainly! But ah!
what a seer!"

"Don't you imagine," I answered, "that he had a model, and that some
pretty young woman--"

"As pretty a young woman as you please! It doesn't diminish the miracle!
He took his hint, of course, and the young woman, possibly, sat smiling
before his canvas. But, meanwhile, the painter's idea had taken wings.
No lovely human outline could charm it to vulgar fact. He saw the fair
form made perfect; he rose to the vision without tremor, without effort
of wing; he communed with it face to face, and resolved into finer and
lovelier truth the purity which completes it as the fragrance completes
the rose. That's what they call idealism; the word's vastly abused, but
the thing is good. It's my own creed, at any rate. Lovely Madonna,
model at once and muse, I call you to witness that I too am an idealist!"

"An idealist, then," I said, half jocosely, wishing to provoke him to
further utterance, "is a gentleman who says to Nature in the person of a
beautiful girl, 'Go to, you are all wrong! Your fine is coarse, your
bright is dim, your grace is _gaucherie_. This is the way you should
have done it!' Is not the chance against him?"

He turned upon me almost angrily, but perceiving the genial savour of my
sarcasm, he smiled gravely. "Look at that picture," he said, "and cease
your irreverent mockery! Idealism is _that_! There's no explaining it;
one must feel the flame! It says nothing to Nature, or to any beautiful
girl, that they will not both forgive! It says to the fair woman,
'Accept me as your artist friend, lend me your beautiful face, trust me,
help me, and your eyes shall be half my masterpiece!' No one so loves
and res