Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/85

Rh Dormer declared that be would certainly become one—he was on the way to it; and Sherringham, without heeding this charge, went on: "Let me add that, considering you are a painter, your portrait of the complicated Nash is lamentably dim."

"He's not at all complicated; he's only too simple to give an account of. Most people have a lot of attributes and appendages that dress them up and superscribe them, and what I like him for is that he hasn't any at all. It makes him so cool."

"By Jove, you match him there! It's an attribute to be tolerated. How does he manage it?"

"I haven't the least idea—I don't know that he is tolerated. I don't think any one has ever detected the process. His means, his profession, his belongings have never anything to do with the question. He doesn't shade off into other people; he's as neat as an outline cut out of paper with scissors. I like him, therefore, because in intercourse with him you know what you've got hold of. With most men you don't: to pick the flower you must break off the whole dusty, thorny, worldly branch; you find you are taking up in your grasp all sorts of other people and things, dangling accidents and conditions. Poor Nash has none of those ramifications; he's the solitary blossom."

"My dear fellow, you would be better for a little of the same pruning!" Sherringham exclaimed; and the young men continued their walk and their gossip, jerking each other this way and that with a sociable roughness consequent on their having been boys together. Intimacy had reigned, of old,