her jacket, "And you are of the artistic temperament, I suppose?"

"Well, yes," he owned, "in a sense; though not in that in which the word
has been so often misused. I don't see the artist as a performing acrobat
nor as an anarchist in ethics, either. I think that art is one of the big
aspects of life and that through it one gets hold of a big part of
reality."

Mrs. Upton, mildly intent on her corner, looked acquiescent.

"I think," Jack went on, "that, like everything else in life worth having,
it's a harmony only attained by discipline and by sacrifice. And it's
essentially a social, not a selfish attainment; it widens our boundaries of
comprehension and sympathy; it reveals brotherhood. The artist's is a high
form of service."

He suspected Mrs. Upton, while he spoke, of disagreement; he suspected her,
also, of finding him sententious; but she continued to look interested, so
that, quite conscious of his didactic purpose and amused by all the things
he saw in their situation, he unfolded to her his conception of the
artist's place in the social organism.

She said, finally, "I should have thought that art was much more of an end
in itself."

"Ah, there we come to the philosophy of it," said Jack. "It _is_, of
course, a sort of mysticism. One lays hold of something eternal in all
achievement; but then, you see, one finds out that the eternal isn't cut up
into sections, as it were--art here, ethics there--intellect yonder; one
finds out that all that is eternal is bound up with the whole, so that you