an expression of candour so admirable that one might easily have
mistaken it to be insincere. It was part of her that she could swim in
any current, and it was pleasant enough, for the moment, to swim in
Alicia's. Both the Moselle and the cutlets, moreover, were of excellent
quality.

"It's everything to everything, don't you think? And especially, thank
Heaven, to my trade." Her voice softened the brusqueness of this; the
way she said it gave it a right to be said in any terms. That was the
case with flagrancies of hers sometimes.

"To discover motives and morals and passions and ambitions and to make a
picture of them with your own body--your face and hands and
voice--compare our plastic opportunity with the handling of a brush to
do it, or a pen or a chisel!"

"I know what you mean," said Alicia. She had a little flush, and an
excited hand among the wine-glasses. "No, I don't want any; please don't
bother me!" to the man at her elbow with something in aspic. "It's much
more direct--your way."

"And, I think, so much more primitive, so much earlier sanctioned,
abiding so originally among the instincts! Oh, yes! if we are lightly
esteemed it is because we are bad exponents. The ideal has dignity
enough. They charge us, in their unimaginable stupidity, with failing to
appreciate our lines, especially when they are Shakespeare's--with being
unliterary. You might--good Heavens!--as well accuse a painter of not
being a musician? Our business lies behind the words--they are our mere
medium! Rosalind wasn't literary--why should I be? But don't indulge me
in my shop, if it bores you," Hilda added lightly, aware as she was that