If John Kendal had been an on-looker at the little episode
of Lady Halifax's drawing-room in Paris six months earlier
it would have filled him with the purest, amusement. He
would have added the circumstance to his conception of
the type of young woman who enacted it, and turned away
without stopping to consider whether it flattered her or
not. His comprehension of human nature was too catholic
very readily to permit him impressions either of wonder
or contempt--it would have been a matter of registration
and a smile. Realizing this, Kendal was the more at a
loss to explain to himself the feeling of irritation
which the recollection of the scene persistently aroused
in him, in spite of a pronounced disposition, of which
he could not help being aware, not to register it but to
ignore it. His memory refused to be a party to his
intention, and the tableau recurred to him with a
persistence which he found distinctly disagreeable. Upon
every social occasion which brought young ladies of beauty
and middle-aged gentlemen of impressive eminence into
conversational contact he saw the thing in imagination
done again. In the end it suggested itself to him as
paintable--the astonished drawing-room, the graceful
half-kneeling girl with the bent head, the other dismayed
and uncomprehending figure yielding a doubtful hand, his
discomfort indicated in the very lines of his waistcoat.
"_A Fin de Siecle Tribute_," Kendal named it. He dismissed
the idea as absurd, and then reconsidered it as a means
of disposing of the incident finally. He knew it could
be very effectually put away in canvas. He assured himself
again that he could not entertain the idea of painting
it seriously, and that this was because of the inevitable
tendency which the subject would have toward caricature.
Kendal had an indignant contempt for such a tendency,
and the liberty which men who used it took with their
art. He had never descended to the flouting of his own
aims which it implied. He threw himself into his pictures
without reserve; it was the best of him that he painted,
the strongest he could do, and all he could do; he was
sincere enough to take it always seriously. The possibility
of caricature seemed to him to account admirably for his
reluctance to paint "_A Fin de Siecle Tribute_,"--it
was a matter of conscience. He found that the desire to
paint it would not go, however; it took daily more complete
possession of him, and fought his scruples with a strong
hand. It was a fortnight after, and he had not seen
Elfrida in the meantime, when they were finally defeated
by the argument that a sketch would show whether caricature
were necessarily inherent or not. He would make a sketch
purely for his own satisfaction. Under the circumstances
Kendal realized perfectly that it could never be for
exhibition, and indeed he felt a singular shrinking from
the idea that any one should see it. Finally, he gave a
whole day to the thing, and made an admirable sketch.
After that Kendal felt free to make the most of his
opportunities of seeing Elfrida--his irritation with her
subsided, her blunder had been settled to his satisfaction.
He had an obscure idea of having inflicted discipline
upon her in giving the incident form and color upon
canvas, in arresting its grotesqueness and sounding its
true _motif_ with a pictorial tongue. It was his conception
of the girl that he punished, and he let his fascinated
speculation go out to her afterward at a redoubled rate.
She brought him sometimes to the verge of approval, to
the edge of liking; arid when he found that he could not
take the further step he told himself impatiently that
it was not a case for anything so ordinary as approval,
or anything so personal as liking; it was a matter of
observation, enjoyment, stimulus. He availed himself of
these abstractions with a candor that was the more open
for not being complicated with any less hardy motive. He
had long ago decided that relations of sentiment with
Elfrida would require a temperament quite different from
that of any man he knew. It was entirely otherwise with
Janet Cardiff, and Kendal smiled as he thought of the
feminine variation the two girls illustrated. He had a
distinct recollection of one crisp October afternoon
before he went to Paris, as they walked home together
under the brown curling leaves and passed the Serpentine,
when he had found that the old charm of Janet's gray eyes
was changing to a new one. He remembered the pleasure he
had felt in dallying with the thought of making them
lustrous, one day, with tenderness for himself. It had
paled since then, there had been so many other things;
but still they were dear, honest eyes--and Kendal never
brought his reverie to a conclusion under any circumstances
whatever.