"One must live for something," the poetess pleaded, much perplexed in her heart as to what Miss Grey's opinion might be about all this.
"Of course one must live for art; for music and poetry, and colors and decoration."
"And Nature?" Mary Blanchet gently insinuated.
"Nature--no! Nature is the buxom sweetheart of ploughboy poets. We only affect to admire Nature because people think we can't be good if we don't. No one really cares about great cauliflower suns, and startling contrasts of blazing purple and emerald green. There is nothing really beautiful in Nature except her decay; her rank weeds, and dank grasses, and funereal evening glooms."
While he talked this way he was seated on the piano stool, with his face turned away from the piano, on whose keys he touched every now and then with a light and seemingly careless hand, bringing out only a faint note that seemed to help the conversation rather than to interrupt it. He was very handsome, Minola could not help thinking, and there was something in his colorless face and deep eyes that seemed congenial with the talk of glooms and decay. Still, true to her first feeling toward all men, Minola was disposed to dislike him, the more especially as he spoke with an air of easy superiority, as one who would imply that he knew how to maintain his place above women in creation.
"I thought all you poets affected to be in love with Nature," she said. "I mean you younger poets," and she emphasized the word "younger" with a certain contemptuous tone, which made it just what it meant to be--"smaller poets."
"Well, because the elder ones I think really were in love with Nature, and didn't affect anything."
"No," he said decisively, "we don't care about Nature--our school."
"I am from the country; I don't think I know what your school is."
"We don't want to be known in the country; we couldn't endure to be known in the country."
"But fame?" Minola asked--"does fame not go outside the twelve-mile radius?"
"Oh, Miss Grey, do pray excuse me, but you really don't understand us; we don't want fame. What is fame? Vulgarity made immortal."
He rose from his seat and seized his hair with both hands; then constrained himself to endurance, and sat down again.