He looked at the
cover to see whether he had not been mistaken. Then he
sat down beside the open window, where a fine rain came
in and smote upon the page, and read it through, straining
his eyes in the gathering darkness over the last paragraph.
After that he walked up and down the room among the
shadows for half an hour, not ringing for lights, because
the scented darkness of the garden, where the rain was
dripping, and the half outlines of the things in the room
were so much more grateful to his imagination as the
_Decade's_ critic had stimulated it with the young,
mocking, brilliant voice that spoke in the department of
"Fine Arts." It stirred him all through. In the pleasure
it gave him he refused to reflect how often it dismissed
with contempt where it should have considered with respect,
how it was sometimes inconsistent, sometimes exaggerated
and obscure. He was rapt in the delicacy and truth with
which the critic translated into words the recognizable
souls of a certain few pictures--it could not displease
him that they were very few, since three of his were
among them. When it spoke of these the voice was strong
and gentle, with an uplifted tenderness, and all the
suppressed suggestion that good pictures themselves have.
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