Page:A Virgin Heart.pdf/103

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
A VIRGIN HEART
99

curious anatomical odds and ends—legs and hands that look like those exvoto offerings that used, as a matter of fact, to hang in Greek sanctuaries; heads that look as though they had, like Orpheus's head, been rolled by storms among the pebbles of the sea; busts so full of holes that they seem to have served as targets for drunken soldiers. In short nothing comes to us now but fragments—fragments of great archaeological interest, but whose value as works of art is almost nothing. Wouldn't some intermediate method be preferable? By intermediate I mean intelligent. Intelligence is the art of reconciling ideas and producing a harmony. A head of Aphrodite with a broken nose ceases to be a head of Aphrodite. I ask for beauty and they give me a museum specimen. If they want me to admire it, they must make a new nose; if they don't want to make a new nose, then they must divide up the Louvre into two museums, the æsthetic museum and the archaeological museum."

Having finished speaking he looked first of all at Rose, thus showing that he had need, before everything else, of her approbation. Rose's face lit up with happiness. Her eyes