Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/38

30 "Choose to stop them, to reform them—isn't that the choice?" Biddy asked. "That's Nick's," she added, blushing and looking at this personage.

"Ah, our divergence—yes!" sighed Gabriel Nash. "There are all kinds of machinery for that—very complicated and ingenious. Your formulas, my dear Dormer, your formulas!"

"Hang 'em, I haven't got any!" Nick exclaimed.

"To me, personally, the simplest ways are those that appeal most," Mr. Nash went on. "We pay too much attention to the ugly; we notice it, we magnify it. The great thing is to leave it alone and encourage the beautiful."

"You must be very sure you get hold of the beautiful," said Nick.

"Ah, precisely, and that's just the importance of the faculty of appreciation. We must train our special sense. It is capable of extraordinary extension. Life's none too long for that."

"But what's the good of the extraordinary extension if there is no affirmation of it, if it all goes to the negative, as you say? Where are the fine consequences?" Dormer asked.

"In one's own spirit. One is one's self a fine consequence. That's the most important one we have to do with. I am a fine consequence," said Gabriel Nash.

Biddy rose from the bench at this, and stepped away a little, as if to look at a piece of statuary. But she had not gone far before, pausing and turning, she bent her eyes upon Mr. Nash with a heightened colour, an air of hesitation and the question, after a moment: "Are you an æsthete?"

"Ah, there's one of the formulas! That's walking in one's