ink a man
cannot be a successful priest unless he is a man of this world. I do not
see any with that look of Monsieur Pierson, a little tortured within,
and not quite present. He is half an artist, really a lover of music,
that man. I am painting him at the piano; when he is playing his face is
alive, but even then, so far away. To me, monsieur, he is exactly like a
beautiful church which knows it is being deserted. I find him pathetic.
Je suis socialiste, but I have always an aesthetic admiration for that
old Church, which held its children by simple emotion. The times have
changed; it can no longer hold them so; it stands in the dusk, with its
spire to a heaven which exists no more, its bells, still beautiful but
out of tune with the music of the streets. It is something of that which
I wish to get into my picture of Monsieur Pierson; and sapristi! it
is difficult!" Fort grunted assent. So far as he could make out the
painter's words, it seemed to him a large order.

"To do it, you see," went on the painter, "one should have the proper
background--these currents of modern life and modern types, passing him
and leaving him untouched. There is no illusion, and no dreaming, in
modern life. Look at this street. La, la!"

In the darkened Strand, hundreds of khaki-clad figures and girls were
streaming by, and all their voices had a hard, half-jovial vulgarity.
The motor-cabs and buses pushed along remorselessly; newspaper-sellers
muttered their ceaseless invitations. Again the painter made his gesture
of despair: "How am I to get into my picture this modern life, which
washes round him as round that church, there, standing in the middle of
the street? See how the currents sweep round it, as if to wash it away;
yet it stands, seeming not to see them. If I were a phantasist, it
would be easy enough: but to be a phantasist is too simple for me--those
romantic gentlemen bring what they like from anywhere, to serve their
ends. Moi, je suis realiste. And so, monsieur, I have invented an idea.
I am painting over his head while he sits there at the piano a picture
hanging on the wall--of one of these young town girls who have no
mysteriousness at all, no youth; nothing but a cheap knowledge and
defiance, and good humour. He is looking up at it, but he does not see
it. I will make the face of that girl the face of modern life, and he
shall sit staring at it, seeing nothing. What do you think of my idea?"

But Fort had begun to fee