e
salt water. They had clear blue eyes, sea eyes; that curious light hair
which one associates with the sea and with spun glass sometimes. But
they wouldn't do for my purpose. They were unimaginative. As a fact,
Uniacke, they knew the sea too well. That was it. They were familiar
with it, as the little London clerk is familiar with Fleet Street or
Chancery Lane. The twin brother of a prophet thinks prophecy boring
table-talk--not revelation. These children chucked the sea under the
chin. That didn't do for me, and for what I wanted."

"I understand."

"After a great deal of search and worry I came to this conclusion: that
my purpose required of me this--the discovery of an exceptionally
imaginative child, who was unfamiliar with the sea, but into whose heart
and brain I could pour its narrated wonders, whose soul I could fill to
the brim with its awe, its majesty, its murmuring sweetness, its wild
romance and its inexhaustible cruelty. I must make this child see and
know, but through the medium of words alone, of mental vision. If I took
it to the sea the imagination would be stricken down--well, by such
banalities as paddling and catching shrimps."

Uniacke smiled.

"But on the contrary, in London, far from the sea, I could give to the
child only those impressions of the sea that would wake in it the sort
of sea-soul I desired to print. I should have it in my power. And a
child's soul cannot be governed by a mere painter, when a conflict
arises between him and sand-castles and crabs and prawns and the various
magicians of the kind that obsess the child so easily and so entirely."

"Yes, children are conquered by trifles."

"And that, too, is part of their beauty. Under this strong impression, I
packed up my traps and came back to London with the studies for my
picture. I placed them on an easel in my studio and began my search for
the child. At first I sought this child among my cultivated friends;
married artists, musicians, highly-strung people, whose lives were
passed in an atmosphere vibrating with quick impressions. But I went
unrewarded. The children of such people are apt to be peevishly
receptive, but their moods are often cloudy, and I wished for a pellucid
nature. After a time I went lower down, and I began to look about the
streets for my wonder-child."

"What a curious quest!" said Uniacke, leaning forward till the firelight
danced on his thin face and was reflected in his thoughtful hazel eyes.