horrid smooth shapes seen in a dream. The pictures were bewildering, and a little terrifying, but as you grew accustomed to them you were conscious of a curious identity which related even the most widely divergent to one another. Grover felt that in the future he would never fail to recognize at sight any picture that Casimir might paint, no matter how far his experimentation might carry him. No standard that one had ever applied to the paintings of other men, ancient or modern, availed one in seeking to judge the present offerings. They obeyed some occult law of their own, but what they sought to express was a complete enigma to Grover.
"Bit by bit I'm getting nearer to my goal," Casimir was saying with earnest complacency, looking less like a butcher now, his head thrown back and his eyes narrowed in judgment before his own handiwork.
"And that goal?" Grover timidly inquired.
"The goal is to eliminate everything, but everything between myself and the object I am painting. My goal is the pure sensory reaction caused by the object."
"Then why not photograph it and be done with it?"
"Because the camera has only one faculty; it has an accurate eye, but no sense of touch, no instincts, no fear, no hunger, no desire."
"And no preconceived idea of the object?"
"That's the camera's greatest merit,—that, and it's indifference to the past and future of the object. Preconceived ideas are the greatest stumbling block of all.
