Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/36

28 Mr. Nash looked at her with kind eyes. "I hoped you would say you like the Academy better."

"She would if she didn't think you expected it," said Nicholas Dormer.

"Oh, Nick!" Biddy protested.

"Miss Dormer is herself an English picture," Gabriel Nash remarked, smiling like a man whose urbanity was a solvent.

"That's a compliment, if you don't like them!" Biddy exclaimed.

"Ah, some of them, some of them; there's a certain sort of thing!" Mr. Nash continued. "We must feel everything, everything that we can. We are here for that."

"You do like English art, then? "Nick demanded, with a slight accent of surprise.

Mr. Nash turned his smile upon him. "My dear Dormer, do you remember the old complaint I used to make of you? You had formulas that were like walking in one's hat. One may see something in a case, and one may not."

"Upon my word," said Nick, "I don't know any one who was fonder of a generalization than you. You turned them off as the man at the street-corner distributes hand-bills."

"They were my wild oats. I've sown them all."

"We shall see that!"

"Oh, they're nothing now—a tame, scanty, homely growth. My only generalizations are my actions."

"We shall see them, then."

"Ah, excuse me. You can't see them with the naked eye. Moreover, mine are principally negative. People's actions, I