From mere suffering people will
turn away, and you cannot blame them. Every show of it, without hinting at
some door of escape, only urges them to forget it all. Why should they be
pained if it can do no good?"
"For the sake of sympathy, I should say," answered Percivale.
"They would rejoin, 'It is only a picture. Come along.' No; give people
hope, if you would have them act at all, in anything."
"I was almost hoping you would read the picture rather differently. You see
there is a bit of blue sky up there, and a bit of sunshiny scarlet in the
window."
He looked at me curiously as he spoke.
"I can read it so for myself, and have metamorphosed its meaning so. But
you only put in the sky and the scarlet to heighten the perplexity, and
make the other look more terrible."
"Now I know that as an artist I have succeeded, however I may have failed
otherwise. I did so mean it; but knowing you would dislike the picture,
I almost hoped in my cowardice, as I said, that you would read your own
meaning into it.
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