Page:Pictorial beauty on the screen.djvu/245

 by the poignancy of fixed and flowing designs. We are fascinated by these designs at the same time that our fancies pass through and beyond them. The visible work of the artist is only a mesh-work through which our imaginations are whirled away into rapturous regions of experiences unlived and unexpressed. Such transports may be brief, yet they are measureless in their flights. Our attention swings back from these far flights into a quiet response to the delicacy of arrangement of line and shape, of texture and tone, of blending and weaving and vanishing values. We feel an exquisiteness too fine for understanding, which tapers away at last until it is too fine for the most sensitive feeling. And during all the while that we are rapt by the poignancy, the imagination, the exquisiteness of the master's production, we feel that a rich reserve lies beyond our grasp or touch. We cannot quite soar to the master's heights, or plumb his depths, or separate the airy fibers of his weaving.

Yet, when such beauty comes to the screen, who shall say that it is a miracle, that the manner of its coming is above every law and beyond all conjecture? And who shall say that the hour of its coming has not been hastened by the million spectators whose judgments have been whetted and whose sympathies have been deepened by taking thought about the nature of art?