"By all means," said the banker, "go on;" and the rest made haste in
various forms to yield me the word.

"I should say that such a man certainly got mixed, but that his work kept
itself pure from the money consideration, as it were, in spite of him. A
painter or actor, or even a novelist, is glad to get all he can for his
work, and, such is our fallen nature, he does get all he knows how to get:
but, when he has once fairly passed into his work, he loses himself in it.
He does not think whether it will pay or not, whether it will be popular
or not, but whether he can make it good or not."

"Well, that is conceivable," said the banker. "But wouldn't he rather do
something he would get less for, if he could afford it, than the thing he
knows he will get more for? Doesn't the money consideration influence his
choice of subject?"

"Oddly enough, I don't believe it does," I answered, after a moment's
reflection. "A man makes his choice once for all when he embraces the
aesthetic life, or, rather, it is made for him; no other life seems
possible. I know there is a general belief that an artist does the kind of
thing he has made go because it pays; but this only shows the prevalence
of business ideals. If he did not love to do the thing he does, he could
not do it well, no matter how richly it paid."

"I am glad to hear it," said the banker, and he added to the Altrurian:
"So, you see, we are not so bad as one would think. We are illogically
better, in fact."

"Yes," the other assented. "I knew something of your literature as well as
your conditions before I left home, and I perceived that by some anomaly