Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/114



" I ask what that red patch in the lower left-hand corner of the canvas is?" asked Anne.

She was looking at "Art and Need." The picture was almost done. Weeks of weather as variable as Anne's moods had passed. Now the days were longer, and the changed light of the sun had become a prophecy of spring.

"That? Grass, in the sun," answered Howard, squeezing more red paint from a tube.

"And the allegorical significance of the grass?"

"Depends upon the spectator," answered the artist. "It means that which it means to you. Symbolic art is no ready-made product. Its office is to evoke, to draw forth from you, to make you a creator."

Anne groaned. Howard's eyes twinkled.

"In all impressionist work, of course, 106