He tried instead to divert his thoughts to the stormy strains which rolled in through the vibrating brickwork, and to picture to himself the large, capable figure of Miss Madden seated in the half-light at the organ-board, swaying to and fro in a splendid ecstasy of power as she evoked at will this superb and ordered uproar.

But the doctor broke insistently in upon his musings.
"All art, so-called, is decay," he said, raising his voice.

"When a race begins to brood on the beautiful--so-called--it is a sign of rot, of getting ready to fall from the tree.

Take the Jews--those marvellous old fellows--who were never more than a handful, yet have imposed the rule of their ideas and their gods upon us for fifteen hundred years.

Why?
They were forbidden by their most fundamental law to make sculptures or pictures.