--only one sauce--and no sense of beauty whatsoever. They can
see the nose on one's face--the mote in their neighbour's eye;
they can see when a bargain is good, when a war will be
expedient. But the one thing they can never see is beauty.
And when, by some rare chance, you catch them in the act of
admiring a beautiful object, it will never be for its beauty
--it will be in spite of its beauty for some other, some
extra-aesthetic interest it possesses--some topical or historical
interest. Beauty is necessarily detached from all that is
topical or historical, or documentary or actual. It is also
necessarily an effect of fine shades, delicate values,
vanishing distinctions, of evasiveness, inconsequence,
suggestion. It is also absolute, unrelated--it is positive or
negative or superlative--it is never comparative. Well, the
Anglo-Saxon public is totally insensible to such things. They
can no more feel them, than a blind worm can feel the colours
of the rainbow."

She laughed again, and regarded him with an air of humorous
meditation.

"And that accounts for the unsuccess of 'A Man of Words'?"

"You might as well offer Francois Villon a banquet of Orient
pearls."

"You are bitterly hard on the Anglo-Saxon public."

"Oh, no," he disclaimed, "not hard--but just. I wish them all
sorts of prosperity, with a little more taste."