"Well, I _will_ tell her, sir. It's time to speak my own mind."

"I think so. It was time long ago. When she sends for me, if it be in the
middle of the night, I shall be with her at once."

He left me and I returned to Percivale.

"I was just thinking before you came," I said, "about the relation of
Nature to our inner world. You know I am quite ignorant of your art, but I
often think about the truths that lie at the root of it."

"I am greatly obliged to you," he said, "for talking about these things. I
assure you it is of more service to me than any professional talk. I always
think the professions should not herd together so much as they do; they
want to be shone upon from other quarters."

"I believe we have all to help each other, Percivale. The sun himself could
give us no light that would be of any service to us but for the reflective
power of the airy particles through which he shines. But anything I know I
have found out merely by foraging for my own necessities."

"That is just what makes the result valuable," he replied. "Tell me what
you were thinking."

"I was thinking," I answered, "how everyone likes to see his own thoughts
set outside of him, that he may contemplate them _objectively,_ as the
philosophers call it. He likes to see the other side of them, as it were."

"Yes, that is, of course, true; else, I suppose, there would be no art at
all."