“Why,” cried the artist, “those are almost her exact words—­as I have just been reading them!”

The other, smiling, continued quietly, “Your appreciation and understanding of your mother will continue to grow through all your life, Aaron.  When you are old—­as old as I am—­you will still find in those letters hidden treasures of thought, and truths of greater value than you, now, can realize.  But here—­I have brought you your share of the afternoon’s mail.”

When Aaron King opened the envelope that his friend laid on the table before him, he sat regarding its contents with an air of thoughtful meditation—­lost to his surroundings.

The novelist—­who had gone to the window and was looking into the rose garden—­turned to speak to his friend; but the other did not reply.  Again, the man at the window addressed the painter; but still the younger man was silent.  At this, Conrad Lagrange came back to the table; an expression of anxiety upon his face.  “What is it, old man?  What’s the matter?  No bad news, I hope?”

Aaron King, aroused from his fit of abstraction, laughed shortly, and held out to his friend the letter he had just received.  It was from Mr. Taine.  Enclosed was the millionaire’s check.  The letter was a formal business note; the check was for an amount that drew a low whistle from the novelist’s lips.

“Rather higher pay than old brother Judas received for a somewhat similar service, isn’t it,” he commented, as he passed the letter and check back to the artist.  Then, as he watched the younger man’s face, he asked, “What’s the matter, don’t you like the flavor of these first fruits of your shame?  I advise you to cultivate a taste for this sort of thing as quickly as possible—­in your own defense.”

“Don’t you think you are a little bit too hard on us all, Lagrange?” asked the artist, with a faint smile.  “These people are satisfied.  The picture pleases them.”

“Of course they are pleased,” retorted the other.  “You know your business.  That’s the trouble with you.  That’s the trouble with us all, these days—­we painters and writers and musicians—­we know our business too damned well.  We have the mechanics of our crafts, the tricks of our trades, so well in hand that we make our books and pictures and music say what we please.  We use our art to gain our own vain ends instead of being driven by our art to find adequate expression for some great truth that demands through us a hearing.  You have said it all, my friend—­you have summed up the whole situation in the present-day world of creative art—­these people are satisfied.  You have given them what they want, prostituting your art to do it.  That’s what I have been doing all these years—­giving people what they want.  For a price we cater to them—­even as their tailors, and milliners, and barbers.  And never again will the world have a truly great art or literature until men like us—­in the divine selfishness of their, calling—­demand, first and last, that they, themselves, be satisfied by the work of their hands.”