Page:In a winter city, by Ouida.djvu/66

Rh kindred to us. Art elsewhere is the guest of the salon—with us she is the play-mate of the infant and the serving-maid of the peasant: the mules may drink from an Etruscan sarcophagus, and the pigeons be fed from a patina of the twelfth century."

Lady Hilda listened with the look of awakened interest still in her large eyes; he spoke in his own tongue, and with feeling and grace; it was new to her to find a man with whom art was an emotion instead of an opinion.

The art world she had met with was one that was very positive, very eclectic, very hyper-critical, very highly cultured; it had many theories and elegant phrases; it laid down endless doctrines, and found pleasure in endless disputations. Whenever she had tired of the world of fashion, this was the world she had turned to; it had imbued her with knowledge of art, and immeasurable contempt for those to whom art was a dead letter; but art had remained with her rather an intellectual dissipation than a tenderness of sentiment.

"As you care for these things, Madame,"