Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it

Host: The afternoon light slanted through tall windows, fractured by the dust motes that hung in the air like quiet thoughts suspended mid-sentence. The room — half-parlor, half-museum — was a portrait of tasteful decay: an antique piano, a vase of wilted lilies, art books opened to pages no one had turned in weeks. On the wall, a large portrait of a woman — exquisitely beautiful, perfectly composed — gazed down in eternal stillness.

At the center of the room sat Jack, on a worn velvet armchair, turning an old photograph over and over in his hand. Jeeny stood near the window, one arm crossed over her chest, the other cradling a cup of tea that had long gone cold.

Jeeny: “George Bernard Shaw once said, ‘Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?’”

Jack: (glancing at her with a crooked smile) “Leave it to Shaw to turn admiration into cynicism. He never met a truth he couldn’t insult into elegance.”

Host: The clock ticked faintly from the mantle, the sound marking the slow erosion of silence. The portrait’s gaze — calm, unchanging — seemed to hover over their conversation like judgment made flesh.

Jeeny: “He wasn’t insulting beauty, Jack. He was revealing its frailty. How quickly we stop seeing what dazzled us once.”

Jack: “Or maybe he was revealing ours. People get bored of perfection. It’s too clean, too complete. It doesn’t invite curiosity — just consumption.”

Jeeny: “But isn’t that the tragedy of beauty? It’s always temporary, either in form or in wonder.”

Jack: “No — the tragedy is that we treat beauty like novelty. The moment it becomes familiar, we discard it. That’s not the fault of beauty — that’s the failure of attention.”

Host: Jeeny moved toward the painting, her fingers brushing its ornate gold frame. The woman in the portrait looked untouched by time, but somehow lonelier for it.

Jeeny: “You’re saying the problem isn’t beauty — it’s blindness.”

Jack: “Exactly. People think beauty fades. It doesn’t. Perception does. The eyes grow lazy once the shock wears off.”

Host: The light deepened, falling now in sharp lines across their faces — two halves of a conversation carved from shadow and gold.

Jeeny: “Still… Shaw had a point. Love, art, even faith — they all suffer from the same disease. We want revelation, not repetition. We chase the new instead of nurturing the known.”

Jack: “Because the new flatters our hunger. The familiar demands responsibility.”

Jeeny: “You sound like you’re talking about more than paintings.”

Jack: (with a faint smile) “Aren’t you?”

Host: Her eyes met his, and for a brief second, the silence shifted — became charged, intimate, dangerous. Then she looked away, her fingers tightening around the cold cup.

Jeeny: “Maybe beauty was never meant to last. Maybe it’s meant to strike, not stay. Like lightning — not the lamp.”

Jack: “You think impermanence makes it more beautiful?”

Jeeny: “Don’t you? The Japanese call it wabi-sabi — the beauty of things imperfect, transient, incomplete. The vase that cracks, the leaf that falls. We admire them because they end.”

Jack: “And yet we build museums — mausoleums, really — just to freeze what should have breathed.”

Host: The fireplace glowed faintly, the embers pulsing like quiet hearts. Jeeny set her cup down on the piano, where a thin film of dust had begun to settle.

Jeeny: “Tell me, Jack. Do you think you’d still love something if you saw it every day? If it never surprised you again?”

Jack: (pausing) “If it was real, yes. Because real beauty doesn’t live in the surface — it lives in the shift. It’s how light moves across the same face differently each morning.”

Jeeny: “That sounds poetic. But people don’t look that deeply. They stop seeing once they think they understand.”

Jack: “Understanding is overrated. You can’t understand beauty. You can only remain in awe of it — or lose it.”

Host: The wind rattled the windowpane softly, like the polite knocking of time asking to be let in. The room darkened, save for the slanted light that fell upon the painting. The woman’s painted eyes caught the last glimmer of day — and for an instant, she seemed almost alive.

Jeeny: (quietly) “You think Shaw stopped looking at his own beauties?”

Jack: “I think Shaw was afraid of comfort. Comfort kills curiosity. Once you settle into beauty, it stops performing. You have to meet it halfway — with wonder, with attention, with effort.”

Jeeny: “So beauty is a relationship.”

Jack: “Exactly. And most people fall out of love not because beauty fades — but because they stop participating in it.”

Host: She smiled then, the kind of smile that carried melancholy in its corners. The room felt smaller now, intimate, as though the walls themselves leaned closer to listen.

Jeeny: “That’s what art teaches us, doesn’t it? To keep looking. To keep seeing. Even when the shock of newness dies.”

Jack: “And maybe that’s the artist’s curse — they never get to stop seeing. Even when the world looks away.”

Host: The flames shifted, sending new light across their faces — Jack’s sharp, Jeeny’s soft, both touched by the same golden pulse.

Jack: “You know, maybe Shaw was right in one way. The world only looks at beauty for three days. After that, it takes a special kind of love — or madness — to keep seeing.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe wisdom is the madness that keeps looking.”

Host: The clock struck five, its chime echoing through the empty house. The painting loomed behind them, eternal and indifferent, yet suddenly it seemed less static — as if beauty itself had overheard and sighed.

Jeeny: “So tell me, Jack… when was the last time you looked at something — really looked — without expecting it to impress you?”

Jack: (after a pause) “Right now.”

Host: She didn’t reply. She didn’t have to. The air between them said everything words could not — the strange, fragile beauty of two people still willing to see each other after countless days in the same house.

The light faded, and the camera drew back through the window, into the slow dusk outside. The portrait glowed faintly in the background, surrounded by silence, its painted eyes watching the living with ancient patience.

And as the scene dissolved into darkness, George Bernard Shaw’s irony turned to quiet truth:

that beauty is not fleeting,
we are;
that it is not the beloved who grows dull,
but the beholder who grows blind;

and that to keep seeing —
after the third day,
the third year,
the third heartbreak —
is not naivety,
but devotion.

For beauty endures,
only in the eyes
that never tire of looking.