Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/53

A Puritan Bohemia He scrutinized the faces of the two girls. It had never occurred to him before that Miss Wistar was so beautiful. She was thinking, as she had often thought, that he looked like some old, fair-haired Saxon hero.

He went on with growing vehemence, vainly trying to kindle in Anne's eyes the light that glowed in Helen's. His boyish manner had disappeared.

"This must be his academic air," thought Anne mournfully. "He is almost pompous. Yet he is ridiculously like himself at ten. That is partly because of the cleft in his chin."

The art of to-day has a threefold mission, he was saying. Its products must be shared with the people; art schools must be established to train the children of the poor, and to discover latent talent that now goes to waste; and the lives of the poor must be studied seriously.

"It is time for the Dresden china interpretation of human life to disappear. Art must enter the arena. It must partake of