And
it intensifies everything so that I don't care how little
comes that way. If there's anything of me left when I
die it will be that little fierce flame. And when I do
the tiniest thing, write the shortest sentence that rings
_true_, see a beauty or a joy which the common herd pass
by, I have my whole life in the flame, and it becomes my
soul--I'm sure I have no other!
"When you say that there is no real pleasure in the world
that does not come through art," Elfrida went on again,
widening her eyes seriously, "don't you feel as if you
were uttering something religious--part of a creed--as
the Mussulman feels when he says there is no God but one
God, and Mohammed is his prophet? I do."
"I never say it," Kendal returned, with a smile. "Does
that make me out a Philistine, or a Hindu, or what?"
"_You_ a Philistine!" Elfrida cried, as they rose from
the little table. "You are saying a thing that is absolutely
wicked."
Her quasi-conventional mood had vanished completely, and
as they drove together in a hansom through the mysterious
movement of the lamp-lit London streets, toward her
lodgings, she plunged enjoyingly into certain theories
of her religion, which embraced Arnold and Aristotle and
did not exclude Mr.
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