Dora.  We don’t so much care about being answered civilly, as about not being asked things back again.

L.  “Ayez seulement la patience que je le parle.”  There shall be no requitals.

Dora.  Well, then, first of all—­What shall we ask first, Mary?

Mary.  It does not matter.  I think all the questions come into one, at last, nearly.

Dora.  You know, you always talk as if the crystals were alive; and we never understand how much you are in play, and how much in earnest.  That’s the first thing.

L. Neither do I understand, myself, my dear, how much I am in earnest.  The stones puzzle me as much as I puzzle you.  They look as if they were alive, and make me speak as if they were; and I do not in the least know how much truth there is in the appearance.  I’m not to ask things back again to-night, but all questions of this sort lead necessarily to the one main question, which we asked, before, in vain, “What is it to be alive?”

Dora.  Yes; but we want to come back to that:  for we’ve been reading scientific books about the “conservation of forces,” and it seems all so grand, and wonderful; and the experiments are so pretty; and I suppose it must be all right:  but then the books never speak as if there were any such thing as “life.”

L. They mostly omit that part of the subject, certainly, Dora; but they are beautifully right as far as they go; and life is not a convenient element to deal with.  They seem to have been getting some of it into and out of bottles, in their “ozone” and “antizone” lately; but they still know little of it:  and, certainly, I know less.

Dora.  You promised not to be provoking, to-night.

L. Wait a minute.  Though, quite truly, I know less of the secrets of life than the philosophers do; I yet know one corner of ground on which we artists can, stand, literally as “Life Guards” at bay, as steadily as the Guards at Inkermann; however hard the philosophers push.  And you may stand with us, if once you learn to draw nicely.

Dora.  I’m sure we are all trying! but tell us where we may stand.

L. You may always stand by Form, against Force.  To a painter, the essential character of anything is the form of it, and the philosophers cannot touch that.  They come and tell you, for instance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or calorific energy (or whatever else they like to call it), in a tea-kettle as in a Gier-eagle.  Very good; that is so; and it is very interesting.  It requires just as much heat as will boil the kettle, to take the Gier-eagle up to his nest; and as much more to bring him down again on a hare or a partridge.  But we painters, acknowledging the equality and similarity of the kettle and the bird in all scientific respects, attach, for our part, our principal interest to the difference in their forms.  For us the primarily cognizable facts, in the two things, are, that the kettle has