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70 “What would you plan?” she inquired.

“We will do my way to-morrow, and your way to-day,” he said.

“All right. I promise to enjoy your way if you will promise to enjoy mine, not just endure it scornfully.”

“You must think I’m a boor.”

“No. But I think that until you learn that an artist cannot afford to scorn any phase of life that is human, you will never do great work.”

He looked at her keenly.

“Fifth Avenue isn’t human. It’s an imitation,” he objected.

“You’re very young, Jarvis,” she commented.

“Upon my soul,” he laughed, so spontaneously that an old fogy at the next table said audibly to his waitress, “Bride and groom,” and for some reason Bambi resented it with a flare of colour.

“It’s true,” she continued; “until you realize that Fifth Avenue and the Bowery are as inevitable as the two ends of the teeter-totter, you won’t see the picture true.”

“Sometimes you show a most surprising poise,” he granted her. “But of course you are not the stuff of which creative artists are made.”