"Perfectly!" said Aveline, looking up to him with a smile.
"And which does this string rhyme to?" he asked, when he had put it on.
"Ah! you are right," said Aveline, "the octaves are the rhymes of music. Look, this is the octave."
"Now, will you go back to the sofa?" he asked.
Aveline shook her head. "I am comfortable here," she said. "I don't mean to move till I grow restless. Will you have the goodness to bring me that tray? I want to look over my tools."
She threw off the handkerchief, and sat playing with her tools and turning them over like a child.
Mr. Haveloc drew a low chair close to hers and began to examine them also.
"Ah!" said Aveline, looking up, "I was just going to advise you to address yourself to sculpture. It is the finest of all the arts."
"Do you place it above poetry?" he asked.
"Sculpture is poetry," said Aveline eagerly, "only it is a universal language. It is the highest art. It is profaned as every thing in these days is profaned, by the language of ridicule and burlesque. But everything in sculpture that is not addressed to the most ideal feelings, becomes disagreeable. The ideal is the atmosphere of sculpture. It does not admit of caricature. Think of Danton's villanous statuettes," and Aveline looked all disgust.
"Ah!" said Mr. Haveloc, "there is one of Litzt, on the drawing-room mantel-piece in my villa--a wonderful likeness."
"And you have not broken it to pieces?" claimed Aveline.
"That would not be in accordance with the Ideal," said Mr. Haveloc. "Justice is a cardinal virtue, and I presume a subject worthy of the chisel; and M. Litzt does not belong to me."
"I did not know," said Mr. Haveloc, "that you were such an enemy to the comic muse. I am sure you must enjoy wit."
"Yes. But the spirit of wit is the very essence of prose, in direct opposition to poetry, which takes all things in a serious light. And in these days everything is mocked and parodied until people are laughed out of the little love they have left for what is noble and beautiful."
"And then there will be a great reaction," said Mr. Haveloc. "We shall all become as sober as judges a few years hence."
"I hope at least," said Aveline "that we shall learn to laugh in the right place, and that will be, not at great, but at little sentiments and actions."
