Page:Margaret Sherwood--A Puritan in Bohemia.djvu/71

A Puritan Bohemia unenlightened do not see. Every trace of human expression is sacred to me."

"I simply go one step further. You copy facts, you say. I try to distill from facts an inner meaning. I try to express my sense of things. It is my reaching out after the unattainable, la verité vraie."

"Nobody," said Anne solemnly, "has any right to know the abstract meanings of things until he has grasped the significance of the concrete."

"But your realist, in copying the concrete, fails to represent any thought of his own."

"Perhaps," suggested Anne, "he thinks that he is putting down fragments of a larger thought than his own. He may be humble enough to realize that he hasn't grasped all truth. In doing that unpretentious work doesn't he try to suggest the worth and the mystery of every meanest fact of life?"

"That work lacks significance. It gives you no chance to express your idea of the meaning of things."