"_What_ is it--if you think you know?"
"It is entirely, so to speak, _per se_--by itself--"
"What the devil do you mean by that?"
I looked at his picture, appalled. The entire canvas was one monotonous
vermillion conflagration. I examined it with my head on one side, then on
the other side; I made a funnel with both hands and peered intently
through it at the picture. A menacing murmuring sound came from him.
"Satisfying--exquisitely satisfying," I concluded. "I have often seen
such sunsets--"
"What!"
"I mean such prairie fires--"
"Damnation!" he exclaimed. "I'm painting a bowl of nasturtiums!"
"I was speaking purely in metaphor," said I with a sickly smile. "To me
a nasturtium by the river brink is more than a simple flower. It is a
broader, grander, more magnificent, more stupendous symbol. It may mean
anything, everything--such as sunsets and conflagrations and
Goetterdaemmerungs! Or--" and my voice was subtly modulated to an
appealing and persuasive softness--"it may mean nothing at all--chaos,
void, vacuum, negation, the exquisite annihilation of what has never even
existed."
He glared at me over his shoulder.
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