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 You mean the contessa. . ..

She was speaking figuratively, perhaps, but I have taken her literally. He paused for a moment; then he continued, It is possible that you will also remember my telling you in Florence that I believed Donatello's David to be the most beautiful work of art in the world.

I remember; I still think you were right.

I haven't altered my opinion. It is the most beautiful statue I have ever seen, just as Debussy's l'Après-midi d'un Faune is the most beautiful music I have ever heard, just as The Hill of Dreams is—have you read it?

At that time, I had not, and I admitted it. I was even ignorant of the name of the author.

Now Peter, as he sat on the bench beside me, began to speak of Arthur Machen: The most wonderful man writing English today and nobody knows him! His material is handled with the most consummate art; arrangement, reserve, repose, the perfect word, are never lacking from his work and yet, at the age of fifty, he is an obscure reporter on a London newspaper. There are, of course, reasons for this neglect. It is a byword of the day that one only takes from a work of art what one brings to it, and how few readers can bring to Machen the requisite qualities; how few readers have gnosis!

Machen evokes beauty out of horror, mystery, and terror. He suggests the extremes of the terrible, the vicious, the most evil, by never describing