“Then you did not want to preach to me,” Thurley sighed with relief.
“This is all a part of it,” he warned, “for you have strayed far from the vanguard. First, to finish about myself. For I have been glad the world lost an excellent tenor because he might have been a foolish one. I am better placed as I am; but you, Thurley, are running amuck. Why this shallow flippancy? This false basis of theories, mistaking shadow for substance? Because you hear such and such a great _diva_ bore a child for a crown prince—that this artist acts under the influence of morphine and that one paints only when addled from absinthe—you must not pursue these phantoms of self-indulgence—and you who sit there looking confused yet combative, you are at this very moment halfway inviting an intrigue with an honest country lad—Dan Birge! Can you not remember that scullery maids as well as prima donnas dabble their virtue in cheap stains; there is nothing distinctive about it?”
Instantly at war with herself, yet happy because Hobart was speaking to her, Thurley, of her personal tangles, she began a spirited defence, using Lissa’s blasé theories.
He waved them aside, answering in a brusque manner, a contrast to his dreamy fashion of a moment ago, “You say, ‘I am different—on an independent train!’ Then so are we all, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.
“Why applaud, throw gold, even title a man or a woman who, despite remarkable ability, has betrayed every simple tenet of faith and mocked at the very subject matter which gives them their laurel wreath? We need a new standard for art, Thurley.
“As the air has been conquered for a flight, a dozen things of science, a broader version of theology, let us make the standards of personality of importance in considering genius. Ultimately we should not lose. The artists themselves would be the spiritual gainers, if forced to live up to the ideals they so conscientiously and glibly prescribe for every one else. You hear of a tradesman who abuses his family and his business invariably falls off as a result. Yet we encore a man who has cynically betrayed a young girl and laugh indulgently when reading of his drunken escapades. ‘But what a Romeo!’ we say. ‘We must excuse him—an artist, you know.’ There is an end of it. Is it not true that in politics nothing damns a candidate more than a whisper against his good name—his name, mark you, not his abilities? In religion, what ruins a clergyman more than the rumor of the little choir girl—? In everything else the world has attempted to deal out justice regarding the equation of personal and professional life, but at the mere mention of talent, genius—temperament—even a bobbed-haired musical comedy actress—the public sinks giggling like a schoolgirl into an orchestra chair and becomes ineffectual, blind, duped—immoral!”