can't separate beauty from goodness and truth any more than you can divide
a man's moral sense from his artistic and rational interests."

"Still, it's in sections for us, surely? What very horrid people can be
great artists," Mrs. Upton half questioned, half mused.

"Ah, I don't believe it! I don't believe it!" Jack broke out. "You'll find
a flaw in his art, if you find a moral chaos in him. It must be a harmony!"

The corner was long since turned, and on a simple stretch of blue Mrs.
Upton now looked up at him with a smile that showed him that whether she
liked what he said or not, she certainly liked him. It was here that the
slight bewilderment came in, to feel that he had been upholding some
unmoral doctrine she would have smiled in just the same way; and the
bewilderment was greater on feeling how much he liked her to like him. Over
the didactic intentions, a boyish, an answering, smile irradiated his face.

"I'm not much of a thinker, but I suppose that it does all come together,
somehow," she said.

"I'm sure that you make a great deal of beauty, wherever you are," Jack
answered irrelevantly. "I've heard that your cottage in England is so
charming. Mrs. Wake was telling me about it."

"It is a dear little place."

He remembered, suddenly, that the room where they talked contradicted his
assertion, and, glancing about it furtively, his eye traversed the highly
glazed surface of the Correggio. Mrs. Upton's glance followed his. "I don't
think I ever cared, so seriously, about beauty," she said, smiling quietly.