Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/258

248 known. I wanted to say to him that art was advanced whenever one true and beautiful thing was done, whether it ever came into what he called his market or not,—whether it were ever seen by any other eyes than the artist's or not. I 've a notion that art is only one form of truth, and that laws of growth of truth are as sure and steadfast as the laws of growth of a crystal. I reckon the tourmalines in Black Ledge never stop growing one second from the day they began, whether we are to find them to-day, or our children's grandchildren are to find them a hundred years hence. But I did 'nt argue with the fellow. He paints great pictures of Western territories, a county or two at a time, warranted to fit the largest dining-rooms, and gets thirty thousand dollars apiece for them. What 's the use of telling him that my darling's pansies and fox-gloves on a bit of white crape set in an old mahogany door in a Maine parsonage are dearer to the heart of the God of Art, and really a higher water mark in the Art Record, than all his acres of canvas?"

It was not only that Jim's letters grew fuller and fuller of Ally. They grew fuller and fuller of expressions of fondness for her, of delight in her. While these maddened me, they also slowly awoke in my heart a feeling akin to scorn of Jim's love.

"He speaks of her as his darling to a third person," I said to myself. I could as soon hold up one of her golden curls to passers-by in the street and say, "Look at this for a color, my masters!"