his own.

"Yes," said he.

"Its beauty, though," she reflected, "is n't exactly of the
obvious sort--is it? It does n't jump at you, for instance.
It is rather in the texture of the work, than on the surface.
One has to look, to see it."

"One always has to look, to see beauty that is worth seeing,"
he safely generalised. But then--he had put his foot in the
stirrup--his hobby bolted with him. "It takes two to make a
beautiful object. The eye of the beholder is every bit as
indispensable as the hand of the artist. The artist does his
work--the beholder must do his. They are collaborators. Each
must be the other's equal; and they must also be like each
other--with the likeness of opposites, of complements. Art, in
short, is entirely a matter of reciprocity. The kind of beauty
that jumps at you is the kind you end by getting heartily tired
of--is the skin-deep kind; and therefore it is n't really
beauty at all--it is only an approximation to beauty--it may be
only a simulacrum of it."

Her eyes were smiling, her face was glowing, softly, with
interest, with friendliness and perhaps with the least
suspicion of something else--perhaps with the faintest glimmer
of suppressed amusement; but interest was easily predominant.

"Yes," she assented . . . . But then she pursued her own train
of ideas. "And--with you--I particularly like the woman