Leighton stopped and leaned forward.

“Then he said this, and the thunder was gone from his voice:  ’When all the trappings of the world’s religions have rotted away, the vicarious intention and example of Christ will still stand and bring a surge to the hearts of unforgetful men.  Thou child, believe me, what humanity has gained of the best is founded solidly on sacrifice—­on the individual ruin of many men and women and little children.’”

Leighton paused.  Lewis was sitting with locked hands.  He was trying to detach his mind from personalities.

“That’s a great sophistry, isn’t it?” he said.

“Do you know the difference between a sophistry and a great sophistry?” asked Leighton.  “A sophistry is a lie; a great sophistry is merely super-truth.”

“I can see,” he went on, “that it’s difficult for you to put yourself outside sculpture.  Let’s switch off to literature, because literature, next to music, is the supreme expression in art.  I heard one of the keenest men in London say the other day, ’The man who writes a book that everybody agrees with is one of two things:  a mere grocer of amusement or a mental pander to cash.’

“You’ve read Irving’s tales of the Catskills and of the Alhambra.  Vignettes.  I think I remember seeing you read Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter.”  I pick out two Americans because to-day our country supports more literary grocers and panders than the rest of the world put together.  It isn’t the writers’ fault altogether.  You can’t turn a nation from pap in a day any more than you can wean a baby on lobster a la Newburg.

“But to get back.  You might say that Irving gives the lie to my keen friend unless you admit, as I do, that Irving was not a writer of books so much as a painter of landscapes.  He painted the scenes that were dear to his heart, and in his still blue skies he hung the soft mists of fable, of legend, and of the pageant of a passing race.  Hawthorne was his antithesis—­a painter of portraits of the souls of men and women.  That’s the highest achievement known to any branch of art.”  Leighton paused.  “Do you know why those two men wrote as they did?”

Lewis shook his head.

“Because, to put it in unmistakable English, they had something on their chest, and they had to get it off.  Irving wrote to get away from life.  Hawthorne never wrote to get away from life,—­he wrote himself into it forever and forever.”

Leighton paused to get his cigar well alight.

“And now,” he went on, “we come to the eternal crux.  Which is beauty?  Irving’s placid pictures of light, or Hawthorne’s dark portrayals of the varying soul of man?” He turned to Lewis.  “What’s your idea of a prude?”

“A prude,” stammered Lewis—­“why a prude’s a person with an exaggerated idea of modesty, isn’t it?”