Spring came unusually early that year. By the first of the month a few
willows and thorn bushes in the Park had turned green; then, in a single
day, the entire Park became lovely with golden bell-flowers, and the
first mowing machine clinked over the greenswards leaving a fragrance of
clipped verdure in its wake.
Under a characteristic blue sky April unfolded its myriad leaves beneath
which robins ran over shaven lawns and purple grackle bustled busily
about, and the water fowl quacked and whistled and rushed through the
water nipping and chasing one another or, sidling alongside, began that
nodding, bowing, bobbing acquaintance preliminary to aquatic courtship.
Many of the wild birds had mated; many were mating; amorous caterwauling
on back fences made night an inferno; pigeons cooed and bubbled and made
endless nuisances of themselves all day long.
In lofts, offices, and shops youthful faces, whitened by the winter's
pallour, appeared at open windows gazing into the blue above, or, with,
pretty, inscrutable eyes, studied the passing throng till the lifted
eyes of youth below completed the occult circuit with a smile.
And the spring sunshine grew hot, and sprinkling carts appeared, and the
metropolis moulted its overcoats, and the derby became a burden, and the
annual spring exhibition of the National Academy of Design remained
uncrowded.
Neville, lunching at the Syrinx Club, carelessly caught the ball of
conversation tossed toward him and contributed his final comment:
"Burleson--and you, Sam Ogilvy--and you, Annan, all say that the
exhibition is rotten. You say so every year; so does the majority of
people. And the majority will continue saying the same thing throughout
the coming decades as long as there are any exhibitions to damn.
"It is the same thing in other countries. For a hundred years the
majority has pronounced every Salon rotten. And it will so continue.
"But the facts are these: the average does not vary much. A mediocrity,
not disagreeable, always rules; supremity has been, is, and always will
be the stick in the riffle around which the little whirlpool will always
centre. This year it happens to be José Querida who stems the sparkling
mediocrity and sticks up from the bottom gravel making a fine little
swirl. Next year--or next decade it may be anybody--you, Annan, or
Sam--perhaps," he added with a slight smile, "it might be I. _Quand
même_. The exhibitions are no rottener than they have ever been; and
it's up to us to go about our business. And I'm going. Good-bye."
He rose from the table, laid aside the remains of his cigar, nodded
good-humouredly to the others, and went out with that quick, graceful,
elastic step which was noticed by everybody and envied by many.
"Hell," observed John Burleson, hitching his broad shoulders forward and
swallowing a goblet of claret at a single gulp, "it's all right for
Kelly Neville to shed sweetness and light over a rotten exhibition where
half the people are crowded around his own picture."
"What a success he's having," mused Ogilvy, looking sideways out of the
window at a pretty girl across the street.
Annan nodded: "He works hard enough for it."
"He works all the time," grumbled Burleson, "but, does he work _hard_?"
"A cat scrambling in a molasses barrel works hard," observed Ogilvy--"if
you see any merit in that, John."
Burleson reared his huge frame and his symmetrical features became more
bovine than ever:
"What the devil has a cat in a molasses barrel to do with the subject?"
he demanded.
Annan laughed: "Poor old honest, literal John," he said, lazily.
"Listen; from my back window in the country, yesterday, I observed one
of my hens scratching her ear with her foot. How would you like to be
able to accomplish that, John?"
"I wouldn't like it at all!" roared Burleson in serious disapproval.
"That's because you're a sculptor and a Unitarian," said Annan, gravely.
"My God!" shouted Burleson, "what's that got to do with a hen scratching
herself!"
Ogilvy was too weak with laughter to continue the favourite pastime of
"touching up John"; and Burleson who, under provocation, never exhibited
any emotion except impatient wonder at the foolishness of others,
emptied his claret bottle with unruffled confidence in his own
common-sense and the futility of his friends.
"Kelly, they say, is making a stunning lot of stuff for that Byzantine
Theatre," he said in his honest, resonant voice. "I wish to Heaven I
could paint like him."
Annan passed his delicate hand over his pale, handsome face: "Kelly
Neville is, without exception, the most gifted man I ever knew."
"No, the most skilful," suggested Ogilvy. "I have known more gifted men
who never became skilful."
[Illustration: "'What's the matter with it, then?'"]
"What hair is that you're splitting, Sam?" demanded Burleson. "Don't
you like Kelly's work?"
"Sure I do."
"What's the matter with it, then?"
There was a silence. One or two men at neighbouring tables turned partly
around to listen. There seemed to be something in the very simple and
honest question of John Burleson that arrested the attention of every
man at the Syrinx Club who had heard it. Because, for the first time,
the question which every man there had silently, involuntarily asked
himself had been uttered aloud at last by John Burleson--voiced in utter
good faith and with all confidence that the answer could be only that
there was nothing whatever the matter with Louis Neville's work. And his
answer had been a universal silence.
Clive Gail, lately admitted to the Academy said: "I have never in my
life seen or believed possible such facility as is Louis Neville's."
"Sure thing," grunted Burleson.
"His personal manner of doing his work--which the critics and public
term 'tek--nee--ee--eek,'" laughed Annan, "is simply gloriously
bewildering. There is a sweeping splendour to it--and _what_ colour!"
There ensued murmured and emphatic approbation; and another silence.
Ogilvy's dark, pleasant face was troubled when he broke the quiet, and
everybody turned toward him:
"Then," he said, slowly, "what _is_ the matter with Neville?"
Somebody said: "He _does_ convince you; it isn't that, is it?"
A voice replied: "Does he convince himself?"
"There is--there always has been something lacking in all that big,
glorious, splendid work. It only needs that one thing--whatever it is,"
said Ogilvy, quietly. "Kelly is too sure, too powerfully perfect, too
omniscient--"
"And we mortals can't stand that," commented Annan, laughing. "'Raus mit
Neville!' He paints joy and sorrow as though he'd never known either--"
And his voice checked itself of its own instinct in the startled
silence.
"That man, Neville, has never known the pain of work," said Gail,
deliberately. "When he has passed through it and it has made his hand
less steady, less omnipotent--"
"That's right. We can't love a man who has never endured what we have,"
said another. "No genius can hide his own immunity. That man paints with
an unscarred soul. A little hell for his--and no living painter could
stand beside him."
"Piffle," observed John Burleson.
Ogilvy said: "It is true, I think, that out of human suffering a quality
is distilled which affects everything one does. Those who have known
sorrow can best depict it--not perhaps most plausibly, but most
convincingly--and with fewer accessories, more reticence, and--better
taste."
"Why do you want to paint tragedies?" demanded Burleson.
"One need not paint them, John, but one needs to understand them to
paint anything else--needs to have lived them, perhaps, to become a
master of pictured happiness, physical or spiritual."
"That's piffle, too!" said Burleson in his rumbling bass--"like that
damn hen you lugged in--"
A shout of laughter relieved everybody.
"Do you want a fellow to go and poke his head into trouble and get
himself mixed up in a tragedy so that he can paint better?" insisted
Burleson, scornfully.
"There's usually no necessity to hunt trouble," said Annan.
"But you say that Kelly never had any and that he'd paint better if he
had."
"Trouble _might_ be the making of Kelly Neville," mused Ogilvy, "and it
might not. It depends, John, not on the amount and quality of the hell,
but on the man who's frying on the gridiron."
Annan said: "Personally I don't see how Kelly _could_ paint happiness or
sorrow or wonder or fear into any of his creations any more convincingly
than he does. And yet--and yet--sometimes we love men for their
shortcomings--for the sincerity of their blunders--for the fallible
humanity in them. That after all is where love starts. The rest--what
Kelly shows us--evokes wonder, delight, awe, enthusiasm.... If he could
only make us love him--"
"_I_ love him!" said Burleson.
"We all are inclined to--if we could get near enough to him," said Annan
with a faint smile.
"Him--or his work?"
"Both, John. There's a vast amount of nonsense talked about the
necessity of separation between a man and his work--that the public has
no business with the creator, only with his creations. It is partly
true. Still, no man ever created anything in which he did not include a
sample of himself--if not what he himself is, at least what he would
like to be and what he likes and dislikes in others. No creator who
shows his work can hope to remain entirely anonymous. And--I am not yet
certain that the public has no right to make its comments on the man who
did the work as well as on the work which it is asked to judge."
"The man is nothing; the work everything," quoted Burleson, heavily.
"So I've heard," observed Annan, blandly. "It's rather a precious
thought, isn't it, John?"
"Do you consider that statement to be pure piffle?"
"Partly, dear friend. But I'm one of those nobodies who cherish a
degenerate belief that man comes first, and then his works, and that the
main idea is to get through life as happily as possible with the minimum
of inconvenience to others. Human happiness is what I venture to
consider more important than the gim-cracks created by those same
humans. Man first, then man's work, that's the order of mundane
importance to me. And if you've got to criticise the work, for God's
sake do it with your hand on the man's shoulder."
"Our little socialist," said Ogilvy, patting Annan's blonde head. "He
wants to love everybody and everybody to love him, especially when
they're ornamental and feminine. Yes? No?" he asked, fondly coddling
Annan, who submitted with a bored air and tried to kick his shins.
Later, standing in a chance group on the sidewalk before scattering to
their several occupations, Burleson said:
"That's a winner of a model--that Miss West. I used her for the fountain
I'm doing for Cardemon's sunken garden. I never saw a model put together
as she is. And that's going some."
"She's a dream," said Ogilvy--"_un pen sauvage_--no inclination to
socialism there, Annan. I know because I was considering the
advisability of bestowing upon her one of those innocent, inadvertent,
and fascinatingly chaste salutes--just to break the formality. She
wouldn't have it. I'd taken her to the theatre, too. Girls are
astonishing problems."
"You're a joyous beast, aren't you, Sam?" observed Burleson.
"I may be a trifle joyous. I tried to explain that to her, but she
wouldn't listen. Heaven knows my intentions are child-like. I liked her
because she's the sort of girl you can take anywhere and not queer
yourself if you collide with your fiancée--visiting relative from
'Frisco, you know. She's equipped to impersonate anything from the
younger set to the prune and pickle class."
"She certainly is a looker," nodded Annan.
"She can deliver the cultivated goods, too, and make a perfectly good
play at the unsophisticated intellectual," said Ogilvy with conviction.
"And it's a rare combination to find a dream that looks as real at the
Opera as it does in a lobster palace. But she's no socialist,
Harry--she'll ride in a taxi with you and sit up half the night with
you, but it's nix for getting closer, and the frozen Fownes for the
chaste embrace--that's all."
"She's a curious kind of girl," mused Burleson;--"seems perfectly
willing to go about with you;--enjoys it like one of those
bread-and-butter objects that the department shops call a 'Miss.'"
Annan said: "The girl is unusual, everyway. You don't know where to
place her. She's a girl without a caste. I like her. I made some
studies from her; Kelly let me."
"Does Kelly own her?" asked Burleson, puffing out his chest.
"He discovered her. He has first call."
Allaire, who had come up, caught the drift of the conversation.
"Oh, hell," he said, in his loud, careless voice, "anybody can take
Valerie West to supper. The town's full of her kind."
"Have you taken her anywhere?" asked Annan, casually.
Allaire flushed up: "I haven't had time." He added something which
changed the fixed smile on his symmetrical, highly coloured face into an
expression not entirely agreeable.
"The girl's all right," said Burleson, reddening. "She's damn decent to
everybody. What are you talking about, Allaire? Kelly will put a head on
you!"
Allaire, careless and assertive, shrugged away the rebuke with a laugh:
"Neville is one of those professional virgins we read about in our
neatly manicured fiction. He's what is known as the original mark.
Jezebel and Potiphar's wife in combination with Salome and the daughters
of Lot couldn't disturb his confidence in them or in himself. And--in my
opinion--he paints that way, too." And he went away laughing and
swinging his athletic shoulders and twirling his cane, his hat not
mathematically straight on his handsome, curly head.
"There strides a joyous bounder," observed Ogilvy.
"Curious," mused Annan. "His family is oldest New York. You see 'em that
way, at times."
Burleson, who came from New England, grunted his scorn for Manhattan,
ancient or recent, and, nodding a brusque adieu, walked away with
ponderous and powerful strides. And the others followed, presently, each
in pursuit of his own vocation, Annan and Ogilvy remaining together as
their common destination was the big new studio building which they as
well as Neville inhabited.
Passing Neville's door they saw it still ajar, and heard laughter and a
piano and gay voices.
"Hi!" exclaimed Ogilvy, softly, "let's assist at the festivities.
Probably we're not wanted, but does that matter, Harry?"
"It merely adds piquancy to our indiscretion," said Annan, gravely,
following him in unannounced--"Oh, hello, Miss West! Was that you
playing? Hello, Rita"--greeting a handsome blonde young girl who
stretched out a gloved hand to them both and nodded amiably. Then she
glanced upward where, perched on his ladder, big palette curving over
his left elbow, Neville stood undisturbed by the noise below, outlining
great masses of clouds on a canvas where a celestial company, sketched
in from models, soared, floated, or hung suspended, cradled in mid air
with a vast confusion of wide wings spreading, fluttering, hovering,
beating the vast ethereal void, all in pursuit of a single exquisite
shape darting up into space.
"What's all that, Kelly? Leda chased by swans?" asked Ogilvy, with all
the disrespect of cordial appreciation.
"It's the classic game of follow my Leda," observed Annan.
"Oh--oh!" exclaimed Valerie West, laughing; "such a wretched witticism,
Mr. Annan!"
"Your composition is one magnificent vista of legs, Kelly," insisted
Ogilvy. "Put pants on those swans."
Neville merely turned and threw an empty paint tube at him, and
continued his cloud outlining with undisturbed composure.
"Where have you been, Rita?" asked Ogilvy, dropping into a chair.
"Nobody sees you any more."
"That's because nobody went to the show, and that's why they took it
off," said Rita Tevis, resentfully. "I had a perfectly good part which
nobody crabbed because nobody wanted it, which suited me beautifully
because I hate to have anything that others want. Now there's nothing
doing in the millinery line and I'm ready for suggestions."
"Dinner with me," said Ogilvy, fondly. But she turned up her dainty
nose:
"Have _you_ anything more interesting to offer, Mr. Annan?"
"Only my heart, hand, and Ogilvy's fortune," said Annan, regretfully.
"But I believe Archie Allaire was looking for a model of your type--"
"I don't want to pose for Mr. Allaire," said the girl, pouting and
twirling the handle of her parasol.
But neither Annan nor Ogilvy could use her then; and Neville had just
finished a solid week of her.
"What I'll do," she said with decision, "will be to telephone John
Burleson. I never knew him to fail a girl in search of an engagement."
"Isn't he a dear," said Valerie, smiling. "I adore him."
She sat at the piano, running her fingers lightly over the keyboard,
listening to what was being said, watching with happy interest
everything that was going on around her, and casting an occasional
glance over her shoulder and upward to where Neville stood at work.
"John Burleson," observed Rita, looking fixedly at Ogilvy, "is easily
the nicest man I know."
"Help!" said Ogilvy, feebly.
Valerie glanced across the top of the piano, laughing, while her hands
passed idly here and there over the keys:
"Sam _can_ be very nice, Rita; but you've got to make him," she said.
"Did you ever know a really interesting man who didn't require
watching?" inquired Annan, mildly.
Rita surveyed him with disdain: "Plenty."
"Don't believe it. No girl has any very enthusiastic use for a man in
whom she has perfect confidence."
"Here's another profound observation," added Ogilvy; "when a woman loses
confidence in a man she finds a brand-new interest in him. But when a
man once really loses confidence in a woman, he never regains it, and
it's the beginning of the end. What do you think about that, Miss West?"
Valerie, still smiling, struck a light chord or two, considering:
"I don't know how it would be," she said, "to lose confidence in a man
you really care much about. I should think it would break a girl's
heart."
"It doesn't," said Rita, with supreme contempt. "You become accustomed
to it."
Valerie leaned forward against the keyboard, laughing:
"Oh, Rita!" she said, "what a confession!"
"You silly child," retorted Rita, "I'm twenty-two. Do you think I have
the audacity to pretend I've never been in love?"
Ogilvy said with a grin: "How about you, Miss West?"--hoping to
embarrass her; but she only smiled gaily and continued to play a light
accompaniment to the fugitive air that was running through her head.
"Don't be selfish with your experiences," urged Ogilvy. "Come on, Miss
West! 'Raus mit 'em!'"
"What do you wish me to say, Sam?"
"That you've been in love several times."
"But I haven't."
"Not once?"
Her lowered face was still smiling, as her pliant fingers drifted into
Grieg's "Spring Song."
"Not one pretty amourette to cheer those twenty-one years of yours?"
insisted Ogilvy.
But his only answer was her lowered head and the faint smile edging her
lips, and the "Spring Song," low, clear, exquisitely persistent in the
hush.
When the last note died out in the stillness Rita emphasised the finish
with the ferrule of her parasol and rose with decision:
"I require several new frocks," she said, "and how am I to acquire them
unless I pose for somebody? Good-bye, Mr. Neville--bye-bye!
Sam--good-bye, Mr. Annan--good-bye, dear,"--to Valerie--"if you've
nothing better on hand drop in this evening. I've a duck of a new hat."
The girl nodded, and, as Rita Tevis walked out, turning up her nose at
Ogilvy who opened the door for her, Valerie glanced up over her shoulder
at Neville:
"I don't believe you are going to need me to-day after all, are you?"
she asked.
"No," he said, absently. "I've a lot of things to do. You needn't stay,
Miss West."
"Now will you be good!" said Annan, smiling at her with his humourous,
bantering air. And to his surprise and discomfiture he saw the least
trace of annoyance in her dark eyes.
"Come up to the studio and have a julep," he said with hasty cordiality.
"And suppose we dine together at Arrowhead--if you've nothing else on
hand--"
She shook her head--the movement was scarcely perceptible. The smile had
returned to her lips.
"Won't you, Miss West?"
"Isn't it like you to ask me when you heard Rita's invitation? You're a
fraud, Mr. Annan."
"Are you going to sit in that boarding-house parlour and examine Rita's
new bonnet all this glorious evening?"
She laughed: "Is there any man on earth who can prophesy what any woman
on earth is likely to do? If _you_ can, please begin."
Ogilvy, hands clasped behind him, balancing alternately on heels and
toes, stood regarding Neville's work. Annan looked up, too, watching
Neville where he stood on the scaffolding, busy as always, with the only
recreation he cared anything for--work.
"I wish to Heaven I were infected with the bacillus of industry," broke
out Ogilvy. "I never come into this place but I see Kelly busily doing
something."
"You're an inhuman sort of brute, Kelly!" added Annan. "What do you work
that way for--money? If I had my way I'd spend three quarters of my time
shooting and fishing and one quarter painting--and I'm as devotedly
stuck on art as any healthy man ought to be."
"Art's a bum mistress if she makes you hustle like that!" commented
Ogilvy. "Shake her, Kelly. She's a wampire mit a sarpint's tongue!"
"The worst of Kelly is that he'd _rather_ paint," said Annan,
hopelessly. "It's sufficient to sicken the proverbial cat."
"Get a machine and take us all out to Woodmanston?" suggested Ogilvy.
"It's a bee--u--tiful day, dearie!"
"Get out of here!" retorted Neville, painting composedly.
"Your industry saddens us," insisted Annan. "It's only in mediocrity
that you encounter industry. Genius frivols; talent takes numerous
vacations on itself--"
"And at its own expense," added Valerie, demurely. "I knew a man who
couldn't finish his 'Spring Academy' in time: and he had all winter to
finish it. But he didn't. Did you ever hear about that man, Sam?"
"Me," said Ogilvy, bowing with hand on heart. "And with that cruel jab
from _you_--false fair one--I'll continue heavenward in the elevator.
Come on, Harry."
Annan took an elaborate farewell of Valerie which she met in the same
mock-serious manner; then she waved a gay and dainty adieu to Ogilvy,
and reseated herself after their departure. But this time she settled
down into a great armchair facing Neville and his canvas, and lay back
extending her arms and resting the back of her head on the cushions.
Whether or not Neville was conscious of her presence below she could not
determine, so preoccupied did he appear to be with the work in hand. She
lay there in the pleasant, mellow light of the great windows, watching
him, at first intently, then, soothed by the soft spring wind that
fitfully stirred the hair at her temples, she relaxed her attention,
idly contented, happy without any particular reason.
Now and then a pigeon flashed by the windows, sheering away high above
the sunlit city. Once, wind-caught, or wandering into unaccustomed
heights, high in the blue a white butterfly glimmered, still mounting to
infinite altitudes, fluttering, breeze-blown, a silvery speck adrift.
"Like a poor soul aspiring," she thought listlessly, watching with dark
eyes over which the lids dropped lazily at moments, only to lift again
as her gaze reverted to the man above.
She thought about him, too; she usually did--about his niceness to her,
his never-to-be-forgotten kindness; her own gratitude to him for her
never-to-be-forgotten initiation.
It seemed scarcely possible that two months had passed since her
novitiate--that two months ago she still knew nothing of the people, the
friendships, the interest, the surcease from loneliness and hopeless
apathy, that these new conditions had brought to her.
Had she known Louis Neville only two months? Did all this new buoyancy
date from two short months' experience--this quickened interest in life,
this happy development of intelligence so long starved, this unfolding
of youth in the atmosphere of youth? She found it difficult to realise,
lying there so contentedly, so happily, following, with an interest and
appreciation always developing, the progress of the work.
Already, to herself, she could interpret much that she saw in this new
world. Cant phrases, bits of studio lore, artists' patter, their ways
of looking at things, their manners of expression, their mannerisms,
their little vanities, their ideas, ideals, aspirations, were fast
becoming familiar to her. Also she was beginning to notice and secretly
to reflect on their generic characteristics--their profoundly serious
convictions concerning themselves and their art modified by surface
individualities; their composite lack of humour--exceptions like Ogilvy
and Annan, and even Neville only proving the rule; their simplicity,
running the entire gamut from candour to stupidity; their patience which
was half courage, half a capacity for suffering; and, in the latter,
more woman-like than like a man.
Simplicity, courage, lack of humour--those appeared to be the
fundamentals characterising the ensemble--supplemented by the extremes
of restless intelligence and grim conservatism.
And the whole fabric seemed to be founded not on industry but on impulse
born of sentiment. In this new, busy, inspiring, delightful world logic
became a synthesis erected upon some inceptive absurdity, carried
solemnly to a picturesque and erroneous conclusion.
She had been aware, in stage folk, of the tendency to sentimental
impulse; and she again discovered it in this new world, in a form
slightly modified by the higher average of reasoning power. In both
professions the heart played the dominant part in creator and creation.
The exceptions to the rule were the few in either profession who might
be called distinguished.
Neville had once said to her: "Nothing that amounts to anything in art
is ever done accidentally or merely because the person who creates it
loves to do it."
She was thinking of this, now, as she lay there watching him.
He had added: "Enthusiasm is excellent while you're dressing for
breakfast; but good pictures are painted in cold blood. Go out into the
back yard and yell your appreciation of the universe if you want to; but
the studio is a silent place; and a blank canvas a mathematical
proposition."
Could this be true? Was all the beauty, all the joyous charm, all the
splendour of shape and colour the result of working out a mathematical
proposition? Was this exquisite surety of touch and handling, of mass
and line composition, all these lovely depths and vast ethereal spaces
superbly peopled, merely the logical result of solving that problem? Was
it all clear, limpid, steady, nerveless intelligence; and was nothing
due to the chance and hazard of inspiration?
Gladys, the cat, walked in, gently flourishing her tail, hesitated,
looked around with narrowing green-jewelled eyes, and, ignoring the
whispered invitation and the outstretched hand, leaped lightly to a
chair and settled down on a silken cushion, paws and tail folded under
her jet-black body.
Valerie reproached her in a whisper, reminding her of past caresses and
attentions, but the cat only blinked at her pleasantly.
On a low revolving stand at Valerie's elbow lay a large lump of green
modelling wax. This wax Neville sometimes used to fashion, with his
facile hands, little figures sketched from his models. These he arranged
in groups as though to verify the composition on the canvas before him,
and this work and the pliant material which he employed had for her a
particular and never-flagging interest. And now, without thinking,
purely instinctively, she leaned forward and laid her hand caressingly
on the lump of wax. There was something about the yielding, velvety
texture that fascinated her, as though in her slim fingers some delicate
nerves were responding to the pleasure of contact.
For a while she moulded little cubes and pyramids, pinched out
bread-crumb chickens and pigs and cats.
"_What_ do you think of this little wax kitten, Gladys?" she whispered,
holding it up for the cat's inspection. Gladys regarded it without
interest and resumed her pleasant contemplation of space.
Valerie, elbows on knees, seated at the revolving stool with all the
naïve absorption of a child constructing mud pies, began to make out of
the fascinating green wax an image of Gladys dozing.
Time fled away in the studio; intent, absorbed, she pinched little
morsels of wax from the lump and pushed them into place with a snowy,
pink-tipped thumb, or with the delicate nail of her forefinger removed
superfluous material.
Stepping noiselessly so not to disturb Neville she made frequent
journeys around to the other side of the cat, sometimes passing
sensitive fingers over silky feline contours, which, research inspired a
loud purring.
As she worked sometimes she talked under her breath to herself, to
Gladys, to Neville:
"I am making a perfectly good cat, Valerie," she whispered. "Gladys,
aren't you a little bit flattered? I suppose you think it's honour
enough to belong to that man up there on the scaffolding. I imagine it
is; he is a very wonderful man, Gladys, very high above us in intellect
as he is in body. He doesn't pay very much attention to you and me down
here on the floor; he's just satisfied to own us and be amiable to us
when he thinks about us.
"I don't mean that in any critical or reproachful sense, Gladys. Don't
you dare think I do--not for one moment! Do you hear me? Well then! If
you are stupid enough to misunderstand me I'll put a perfectly horrid
pair of ears on you!... I've made a very dainty pair of ears for you,
dear; I only said that to frighten you. You and I like that man up
there--tremendously, don't we? And we're very grateful to him for--for a
great many happy moments--and for his unfailing kindness and
consideration.... You don't mind posing for me; _you_ wear fur. But I
didn't wear anything, dear, when I first sat to him as a novice; and,
kitty, I was a fortunate girl in my choice of the man before whom I was
to make a début. And I--"
The rattle of brushes and the creak of the scaffolding arrested her:
Neville was coming down for a view of his work.
"Hello," he said, pleasantly, noticing for the first time that she was
still in the studio.
"Have I disturbed you, Mr. Neville?"
"Not a bit. You never do any more than does Gladys." He glanced absently
at the cat, then, facing his canvas, backed away from it, palette in
hand.
For ten minutes he examined his work, shifting his position from minute
to minute, until the change of positions brought him backed up beside
Valerie, and his thigh brushing her arm made him aware of her. Glancing
down with smiling apology his eye fell on the wax, and was arrested.
Then he bent over the work she had done, examining it, twirled the top
of the stool, and inspected it carefully from every side.
"Have you ever studied modelling, Miss West?"
"No," she said, blushing, "you must know that I haven't." And looked up
expecting to see laughter in his eyes; and saw only the curiosity of
interest.
"How did you know how to start this?"
"I have often watched you."
"Is that all the instruction you've ever had in modelling?"
She could not quite bring herself to believe in his pleasant
seriousness:
"Y-yes," she admitted, "except when I have watched John Burleson.
But--this is simply rotten--childish--isn't it?"
"No," he said in a matter of fact tone, "it's interesting."
"Do you really think--mean--"
He looked down at her, considering her while the smile that she knew and
liked best and thought best suited to his face, began to glimmer; that
amused, boyish, bantering smile hinting of experience and wisdom
delightfully beyond her.
"I really think that you're a very unusual girl," he said. "I don't want
to spoil you by telling you so every minute."
"You don't spoil me by telling me so. Sometimes I think you may spoil me
by not telling me so."
"Miss West! You're spoiled already! I'm throwing bouquets at you every
minute! You're about the only girl who ever sat for me with whom I talk
unreservedly and incessantly."
"Really, Mr. Neville?"
"Yes--really, Mr. Neville," he repeated, laughing--"you bad, spoiled
little beauty! You know devilish well that if there's any intellectual
space between you and me it's purely a matter of circumstance and
opportunity."
"Do you think me silly enough to believe that!"
"I think you clever enough to know it without my telling you."
"I wish you wouldn't say that."
She was still smiling but in the depths of her eyes he felt that the
smile was not genuine.
"See here," he said, "I don't want you to think that I don't mean what I
say. I do. You're as intelligent a woman as I ever knew. I've known
girls more cultivated in general and in particular, but, I say again,
that is the hazard of circumstance. Is all clear between us now, Miss
West?"
"Yes."
He held out his hand; she glanced up, smiled, and laid her own in it.
And they shook hands heartily.
"Good business," he said with satisfaction. "Don't ever let anything
threaten our very charming accord. The moment you don't approve of
anything I say or do come straight to me and complain--and don't let me
divine it in your eyes, Miss West."
"Did you?"
"Certainly I did. Your lips were smiling but in your eyes was something
that did not corroborate your lips."
"Yes.... But how could you see it?"
"After all," he said, "it's part of my business to notice such things."
He seated himself on the arm of her chair and bent over the wax model,
his shoulder against hers. And the chance contact meant nothing to
either: but what he said about men and things in the world was
inevitably arousing the intelligence in her to a gratitude, a happiness,
at first timid, then stirring subtly, tremulously, toward passionate
response.
No man can do that to a girl and leave the higher side of her
indifferent or unresponsive. What he had aroused--what he was awakening
every day in her was what he must some day reckon with. Loyalty is born
of the spirit, devotion of the mind; and spiritual intelligence arouses
fiercer passions than the sensuous emotions born of the flesh.
Leaning there above the table, shoulder to shoulder, his light finger
tips caressing the wax model which she had begun, he told her clearly,
and with the engaging candour which she already had begun to adore in
him, all about what she had achieved in the interesting trifle before
them--explained to her wherein she had failed not only to accomplish but
to see correctly--wherein she had seen clearly and wrought
intelligently.
He might have been talking to a brother sculptor--and therein lay the
fascination of this man--for her--that, and the pains he always took
with her--which courtesy was only part of him--part of the wonder of
this man; of his unerring goodness in all things to her.
Listening, absorbed in all that he said she still was conscious of a
parallel thread of thought accompanying--a tiny filament of innocent
praise in her heart that chance had given her this man to listen to and
to heed and talk to and to think about.
"I won't touch what you've done, Miss West," he said, smilingly; "but
just take a pinch of wax--_that_ way!--and accent that relaxed flank
muscle!... Don't be afraid; watch the shape of the shadows.... That's
it! Do you see? Never be afraid of dealing vigorously with your subject.
Every modification of the first vigorous touch is bound to weaken and
sometimes to emasculate.... I don't mean for you to parade crudity and
bunches of exaggerated muscle as an ultimate expression of vigour. Only
the devotee of the obvious is satisfied with that sort of result; and
our exhibitions reek with them. But there is no reason why the satin
skin and smooth contour of a naked child shouldn't express virility and
vigour--no reason why the flawless delicacy of Venus herself should not,
if necessary, express violence unexaggerated and without either
distortion or lack of finish."
He glanced across at the dozing cat:
"Under that silky black fur there are bones and fibres and muscles.
Don't exaggerate them and call your task finished; merely remember
always that they're there framing and padding the velvet skin. More is
done by skilful inference than by parading every abstract fact you know
and translating the sum-accumulative of your knowledge into the
over-accented concrete. Reticence is a kind of vigour. It can even
approach violence. The mentally garrulous kill their own inspiration.
Inadequacy loves to lump things and gamble with chance for effective
results."
He rose, walked over and examined Gladys, touched her contemplatively
with the button of his mahl-stick, and listened absently to her
responsive purr. Then, palette still in hand, he sat down opposite
Valerie, gazing at her in that detached manner which some mistook for
indifference:
"There are, I think, two reasons for failure in art," he said, "excess
of creative emotion, excess of psychological hair-splitting. The one
produces the normal and lovable failures which, decorate our art
exhibitions; the other results in those curious products which amuse the
public to good-humoured contempt--I mean those pictures full of violent
colour laid on in streaks, in great sweeps, in patches, in dots. The
painter has turned half theorist, half scientist; the theories of the
juxtaposition of colour, and the science of complementary colours,
engrosses his attention. He is no longer an artist; he is a chemist and
physiologist and an artisan.
"Every now and then there is a revolt from the accepted order of things.
New groups form, sometimes damning what they call the artificial
lighting of the studio, sometimes exclaiming against the carnival of
harmonious or crude colour generally known as 'plein air.'
Impressionists scorn the classic, and _vice versa_. But, Miss West, as a
matter of fact, all schools are as good as all religions.
"To speak of studio lighting as artificial and unworthy is silly. It is
pretty hard to find anything really artificial in the world, indoors, or
out, or even in the glare of the footlights. I think the main idea is
that a man should prefer doing what the public calls his work, to any
other form of recreation--should use enough reason--not too much--enough
inspiration--but watching himself at every brush stroke; and finally
should feel physically unfettered--that is, have the _a b c_, the
drudgery, the artisan's part of the work at his finger tips. Then, if he
does what makes him happy, whether in a spirit of realism or
romanticism, he can safely leave the rest to Fate."
He looked at her, curiously for a moment, then a smile wholly
involuntary broke over his face:
"Lord! What a lecture! And you listened to all that nonsense like an
angel!"
The dreamy absorption died out in her eyes; she clasped her hands on her
knee, looked down, then up at him almost irritably:
"Please go on, Mr. Neville."
"Not much. I've a few stunts to execute aloft there--"
He contemplated her in amused silence, which became more serious:
"You have talent, Miss West. Artistic talent is not unusual among
Americans, but patience is. That is one reason why talent accomplishes
so little in this country."
"Isn't another reason that patience is too expensive to be indulged in
by talent?"
He laughed: "That is perfectly true. The majority of us have to make a
living before we know how."
"Did you have to do that?"
"No, I didn't."
"You were fortunate?"
"Yes. I was--perhaps.... I'm not sure."
She touched the lump of green wax gravely, absently. He remained looking
at her, busy with his own reflections.
"Would you like to have a chance to study?" he asked.
"Study? What?"
"Sculpture--any old thing! Would you like to try?
"What chance have I for such expensive amusements as study?" she
laughed.
"I'll be responsible for you."
"_You_?"--in blank surprise.
"I'll attend to the material part of it, if you like. I'll see that you
can afford the--patience."
"Mr. Neville, I don't understand."
"What don't you understand?" he asked, lazily humorous.
"Do you mean--that you offer me--an opportunity--"
"Yes; an opportunity to exercise patience. It's an offer, Miss West. But
I'm perfectly certain you won't take it."
For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm, looking fixedly
into space. Then she stirred, glanced up, blushed vividly, sprang to her
feet and crossed to where he sat.
"I've been considering your offer," she said, striving to speak without
effort.
"I'll bet you won't accept it!"
"You win your wager, Mr. Neville."
"I wonder why?" he said with his bantering smile: "but I think I know.
Talent in America is seldom intellectually ambitious."
To his amazement and vexation tears sprang to her eyes; she said, biting
her lower lip: "My ambition is humble. I care--more than anything in the
world--to be of use to--to your career."
Taken completely by surprise he said, "Nonsense," and rose to confront
her where she stood wholly charming in her nervous, flushed emotion:
"It isn't nonsense, Mr. Neville; it is my happiness.
"I don't believe you realise what your career means to me. I would not
willingly consider anything that might interrupt my humble part in
it--in this happy companionship.... After all, happiness is the
essential. You said so once. I am happier here than I possibly could be
in an isolation where I might perhaps study--learn--" Her voice broke
deliciously as he met her gaze in cool, curious disapproval.
[Illustration: "For a long while she sat, her cheek resting on one palm,
looking fixedly into space."]
"You _can't_ understand it!" she said, flushing almost fiercely. "You
can't comprehend what the daily intimacy with a man of your sort has
done--is doing for me every moment of my life. How can you understand?
You, who have your own place in the world--in life--in this country--in
this city! You, who have family, friends, clubs, your social life in
city and country, and abroad. Life is very full for you--has always
been. But--what I am now learning in contact with you and with the
people to whom you have introduced me--is utterly new to
me--and--very--pleasant.... I have tasted it; I cannot live without it
now."
She drew a deep quick breath, then, looking up at him with a tremulous
smile:
"What would you think if I told you that, until Sam took me, I had never
even been inside a theatre except when I was engaged by Schindler? It is
perfectly true. Mother did not approve. Until I went with John Burleson
I had never ever been in a restaurant; until I was engaged by Schindler
I had never seen the city lighted at night--I mean where the theatres
and cafés and hotels are.... And, Mr. Neville, until I came here to you,
I had never had an opportunity to talk to a cultivated man of my own
age--I mean the kind of man you are."
She dropped her eyes, considering, while the smile still played faintly
with the edges of her lips; then:
"Is it very hard for you to realise that what is an ordinary matter of
course to the young of my age is, to me, all a delightful novelty?--that
I am enjoying to a perfectly heavenly degree what to you and others may
be commonplace and uninteresting? All I ask is to be permitted to enjoy
it while I am still young enough. I--I _must_! I really need it, Mr.
Neville. It seems, at moments, as if I could never have enough--after
the years--where I had--nothing."
Neville had begun walking to and fro in front of her with the quick,
decisive step that characterised his movements; but his restlessness
seemed only to emphasise the attention he concentrated on every word she
spoke; and, though he merely glanced at her from moment to moment, she
was conscious that the man now understood, and was responding more
directly to her than ever before in their brief and superficial
acquaintance.
"I don't want to go away and study," she said. "It is perfectly dear of
you to offer it--I--there is no use in trying to thank you--"
"Valerie!"
"What!" she said, startled by his use of her given name for the first
time in their acquaintance.
He said, smilingly grave: "You didn't think there was a string attached
to anything I offered?"
"A--a string?"
"Did you?"
She blushed hotly: "No, of course not."
"It's all right then," he nodded; but she began to think of that new
idea in a confused, startled, helpless sort of way.
"How could you think _that_ of me?" she faltered.
"I didn't--"
"You--it must have been in your mind--"
"I wanted to be sure it wasn't in _yours_--"
"You ought to have known! Haven't you learned anything at all about me
in two months?"
"Do you think any man can learn anything about anybody in two months?"
he asked, lightly.
"Yes, I do. I've learned a good deal about you--enough, anyway, not to
attribute anything--unworthy--"
"You silly child; you've learned nothing about me if that's what you
think you've discovered."
"I _have_ discovered it!" she retorted, tremulously; "I've learned
horrid things about other men, too--and they're not like you!"
"Valerie! Valerie! I'm precisely like all the rest--my selfishness is a
little more concentrated than theirs, that's the only difference. For
God's sake don't make a god of me."
She sat down on the head of the sofa, looking straight at him, pretty
head lowered a trifle so that her gaze was accented by the lovely level
of her brows:
"I've long wanted to have a thorough talk with you," she said. "Have you
got time now?"
He hesitated, controlling his secret amusement under an anxious gravity
as he consulted the clock.
"Suppose you give me an hour on those figures up there? The light will
be too poor to work by in another hour. Then we'll have tea and
'thorough talks.'"
"All right," she said, calmly.
He picked up palette and mahl-stick and mounted to his perch on the
scaffolding; she walked slowly into the farther room, stood motionless a
moment, then raising both arms she began to unhook the collar of her
gown.
When she was ready she stepped into her sandals, threw the white wool
robe over her body, and tossed one end across her bare shoulder.
He descended, aided her aloft to her own eyrie, walked across the
planking to his own, and resumed palette and brushes in excellent humour
with himself, talking gaily while he was working:
"I'm devoured by curiosity to know what that 'thorough talk' of yours is
going to be about. You and I, in our briefly connected careers, have
discussed every subject on earth, gravely or flippantly, and what in the
world this 'thorough talk' is going to resemble is beyond me--"
"It might have to do with your lack of ceremony--a few minutes ago," she
said, laughing at him.
"My--what?"
"Lack of ceremony. You called me Valerie."
"You can easily revenge that presumption, you know."
"I think I will--Kelly."
He smiled as he painted:
"I don't know why the devil they call me Kelly," he mused. "No episode
that I ever heard of is responsible for that Milesian misnomer. _Quand
même_! It sounds prettier from you than it ever did before. I'd rather
hear you call me Kelly than Caruso sing my name as Algernon."
"Shall I really call you Kelly?"
"Sure thing! Why not?"
"I don't know. You're rather celebrated--to have a girl call you Kelly."
He puffed out his chest in pretence of pompous satisfaction:
"True, child. Good men are scarce--but the good and great are too
nearly extinct for such familiarity. Call me _Mr._ Kelly."
"I won't. You are only a big boy, anyway--Louis Neville--and sometimes I
shall call you Kelly, and sometimes Louis, and very occasionally Mr.
Neville."
"All right," he said, absently--"only hold that distractingly ornamental
head and those incomparable shoulders a trifle more steady, please--rest
solidly on the left leg--let the right hip fall into its natural
position--_that's_ it. Thank you."
Holding the pose her eyes wandered from him and his canvas to the
evening tinted clouds already edged with deeper gold. Through the sheet
of glass above she saw a shred of white fleece in mid-heaven turn to a
pale pink.
"I wonder why you asked me to tea?" she mused.
"What?" He turned around to look at her.
"You never before asked me to do such a thing," she said, candidly.
"You're an absent-minded man, Mr. Neville."
"It never occurred to me," he retorted, amused. "Tea is weak-minded."
"It occurred to me. That's what part of my 'thorough talk' is to be
about; your carelessness in noticing me except professionally."
He continued working, rapidly now; and it seemed to her as though
something--a hint of the sombre--had come into his face--nothing
definite--but the smile was no longer there, and the brows were slightly
knitted.
Later he glanced up impatiently at the sky: the summer clouds wore a
deeper rose and gold.
"We'd better have our foolish tea," he said, abruptly, driving his
brushes into a bowl of black soap and laying aside his palette for his
servant to clean later.
For a while, not noticing her, he fussed about his canvas, using a knife
here, a rag there, passing to and fro across the scaffolding, oblivious
of the flight of time, until at length the waning light began to
prophesy dusk, and he came to himself with a guilty start.
Below, in the studio, Valerie sat, fully dressed except for hat and
gloves, head resting in the padded depths of an armchair, watching him
in silence.
"I declare," he said, looking down at her contritely, "I never meant to
keep you all this time. Good Lord! Have I been puttering up here for an
hour and a half! It's nearly eight o'clock! Why on earth didn't you
speak to me, Valerie?"
"It's a braver girl than I am who'll venture to interrupt you at work,
Kelly," she said, laughingly. "I'm a little afraid of you."
"Nonsense! I wasn't doing anything. My Heaven!--_can_ it be eight
o'clock?"
"It is.... You _said_ we were going to have tea."
"Tea! Child, you can't have tea at eight o'clock! I'm terribly
sorry"--he came down the ladder, vexed with himself, wiping the paint
from his hands with a bunch of cheese cloth--"I'm humiliated and
ashamed, Miss West. Wait a moment--"
He walked hastily through the next room into his small suite of
apartments, washed his hands, changed his painter's linen blouse for his
street coat, and came back into the dim studio.
"I'm really sorry, Valerie," he said. "It was rotten rude of me."
"So am I sorry. It's absurd, but I feel like a perfectly unreasonable
kid about it.... You never before asked me--and I--wanted to--stay--so
much--"
"Why didn't you remind me, you foolish child!"
"Somehow I couldn't.... I wanted _you_ to think of it."
"Well, I'm a chump...." He stood before her in the dim light; she still
reclined in the armchair, not looking at him, one arm crook'd over her
head and the fingers closed tightly over the rosy palm which was turned
outward, resting across her forehead.
For a few moments neither spoke; then:
"I'm horridly lonely to-night," she said, abruptly.
"Why, Valerie! What a--an unusual--"
"I want to talk to you.... I suppose you are too hungry to want to talk
now."
"N-no, I'm not." He began to laugh: "What's the matter, Valerie? What is
on your mind? Have you any serious fidgets, or are you just a spoiled,
pretty girl?"
"Spoiled, Kelly. There's nothing really the matter. I just felt
like--what you asked me to do--"
She jumped up suddenly, biting her lips with vexation: "I don't know
what I'm saying--except that it's rather rude of me--and I've got to go
home. Good-night--I think my hat is in the dressing-room--"
He stood uneasily watching her pin it before the mirror; he could just
see her profile and the slender, busy hands white in the dusk.
When she returned, slowly drawing on her long gloves, she said to him
with composure:
"Some day ask me again. I really would like it--if you would."
"Do you really think that you could stand the excitement of taking a
cup of weak tea with me," he said, jestingly--"after all those jolly
dinners and suppers and theatres and motor parties that I hear about?"
She nodded and held out her hand with decision:
"Good-night."
He retained her hand a moment, not meaning to--not really intending to
ask her what he did ask her. And she raised her velvet eyes gravely:
"Do you really want me?"
"Yes.... I don't know why I never asked you before--"
"It was absurd not to," she said, impulsively; "I'd have gone anywhere
with you the first day I ever knew you! Besides, I dress well enough for
you not to be ashamed of me."
He began to laugh: "Valerie, you funny little thing! You funny, funny
little thing!"
"Not in the slightest," she retorted, sedately. "I'm having a heavenly
time for the first time in my life, and I have so wanted you to be part
of it ... of course you _are_ part of it," she added, hastily--"most of
it! I only meant that I--I'd like to be a little in your other
life--have you enter mine, a little--just so I can remember, in years to
come, an evening with you now and then--to see things going on around
us--to hear what you think of things that we see together.... Because,
with you, I feel so divinely free, so unembarrassed, so entirely off my
guard.... I don't mean to say that I don't have a splendid time with the
others even when I have to watch them; I do--and even the watching is
fun--"
The child-like audacity and laughing frankness, the confidence of her
attitude toward him were delightfully refreshing. He looked into her
pretty, eager, engaging face, smiling, captivated.
"Valerie," he said, "tell me something--will you?"
"Yes, if I can."
"I'm more or less of a painting machine. I've made myself so,
deliberately--to the exclusion of other interests. I wonder"--he looked
at her musingly--"whether I'm carrying it too far for my own good."
"I don't understand."
"I mean--is there anything machine-made about my work? Does it
lack--does it lack anything?"
"No!" she said, indignantly loyal. "Why do you ask me that?"
"People--some people say it does lack--a certain quality."
She said with supreme contempt: "You must not believe them. I also hear
things--and I know it is an unworthy jealousy that--"
"What have you heard?" he interrupted.
"Absurdities. I don't wish even to think of them--"
"I wish you to. Please. Such things are sometimes significant."
"But--is there any significance in what a few envious artists say--or a
few silly models--"
"More significance in what they say than in a whole chorus of
professional critics."
"Are you serious?" she asked, astonished.
"Perfectly. Without naming anybody or betraying any confidence, what
have you heard in criticism of my work? It's from models and brother
painters that the real truth comes--usually distorted, half told,
maliciously hinted sometimes--but usually the germ of truth is to be
found in what they say, however they may choose to say it."
Valerie leaned back against the door, hands clasped behind her, eyebrows
bent slightly inward in an unwilling effort to remember.
Finally she said impatiently: "They don't know what they're talking
about. They all say, substantially, the same thing--"
"What is that thing?"
"Why--oh, it's too silly to repeat--but they say there is nothing
lovable about your work--that it's inhumanly and coldly
perfect--too--too--" she flushed and laughed uncertainly--"'too damn
omniscient' is what one celebrated man said. And I could have boxed his
large, thin, celebrated ears for him!"
"Go on," he nodded; "what else do they say?"
"Nothing. That's all they can find to say--all they dare say. You know
what they are--what other men are--and some of the younger girls, too.
Not that I don't like them--and they are very sweet to me--only they're
not like you--"
"They're more human. Is that it, Valerie?"
"No, I don't mean that!"
"Yes, you do. You mean that the others take life in a perfectly human
manner--find enjoyment, amusement in each other, in a hundred things
outside of their work. They act like men and women, not like a painting
machine; if they experience impulses and emotions they don't entirely
stifle 'em. They have time and leisure to foregather, laugh, be silly,
discuss, banter, flirt, make love, and cut up all the various harmless
capers that humanity is heir to. _That's_ what you mean, but you don't
realise it. And you think, and they think, that my solemn and owlish
self-suppression is drying me up, squeezing out of me the essence of
that warm, lovable humanity in which, they say, my work is deficient.
They say, too, that my inspiration is lacking in that it is not founded
on personal experience; that I have never known any deep emotion, any
suffering, any of the sterner, darker regrets--anything of that passion
which I sometimes depict. They say that the personal and convincing
element is totally absent because I have not lived"--he laughed--"and
loved; that my work lacks the one thing which only the self-knowledge of
great happiness and great pain can lend to it.... And--I think they are
right, Valerie. What do you think?"
The girl stood silent, with lowered eyes, reflecting for a moment. Then
she looked up curiously.
"_Have_ you never been very unhappy?"
"I had a toothache once."
She said, unsmiling: "Haven't you ever suffered mentally?"
"No--not seriously. Oh, I've regretted little secret meannesses--bad
temper, jealousy--"
"Nothing else? Have you never experienced deep unhappiness--through
death, for example?"
"No, thank God. My father and mother and sister are living.... It is
rather strange," he added, partly to himself, "that the usual troubles
and sorrows have so far passed me by. I am twenty-seven; there has never
been a death in my family, or among my intimate friends."
"Have you any intimate friends?"
"Well--perhaps not--in the strict sense. I don't confide."
"Have you never cared, very much, for anybody--any woman?"
"Not sentimentally," he returned, laughing. "Do you think that a good
course of modern flirtation--a thorough schooling in the old-fashioned
misfortunes of true love would inject into my canvases that elusively
occult quality they're all howling for?"
She remained smilingly silent.
"Perhaps something less strenuous would do," he said, mischievously--"a
pretty amourette?--just one of those gay, frivolous, Louis XV affairs
with some daintily receptive girl, not really improper, but only ultra
fashionable. Do you think _that_ would help some, Valerie?"
She raised her eyes, still smiling, a little incredulous, very slightly
embarrassed:
"I don't think your painting requires any such sacrifices of you, Mr.
Neville.... Are you going to take me somewhere to dinner? I'm dreadfully
hungry."
"You poor little girl, of course I am. Besides, you must be suffering
under the terrible suppression of that 'thorough talk' which you--"
"It doesn't really require a thorough talk," she said; "I'll tell you
now what I had to say. No, don't interrupt, please! I want to--please
let me--so that nothing will mar our enjoyment of each other and of the
gay world around us when we are dining.... It is this: Sometimes--once
in a while--I become absurdly lonely, which makes me a fool,
temporarily. And--will you let me telephone you at such times?--just to
talk to you--perhaps see you for a minute?"
"Of course. You know my telephone number. Call me up whenever you like."
"_Could_ I see you at such moments? I--there's a--some--a kind of
sentiment about me--when I'm _very_ lonely; and I've been foolish enough
to let one or two men see it--in fact I've been rather
indiscreet--silly--with a man--several men--now and then. A lonely girl
is easily sympathised with--and rather likes it; and is inclined to let
herself go a little.... I don't want to.... And at times I've done
it.... Sam Ogilvy nearly kissed me, which really doesn't count--does it?
But I let Harry Annan do it, once.... If I'm weak enough to drift into
such silliness I'd better find a safeguard. I've been
thinking--thinking--that it really does originate in a sort of foolish
loneliness ...not in anything worse. So I thought I'd have a thorough
talk with you about it. I'm twenty-one--with all my experience of life
and of men crowded into a single winter and spring. I have as friends
only the few people I have met through you. I have nobody to see unless
I see them--nowhere to go unless I go where they ask me.... So I thought
I'd ask you to let me depend a little on you, sometimes--as a refuge
from isolation and morbid thinking now and then. And from other
mischief--for which I apparently have a capacity--to judge by what I've
done--and what I've let men do already."
She laid her hand lightly on his arm in sudden and impulsive confidence:
"That's my 'thorough talk.' I haven't any one else to tell it to. And
I've told you the worst." She smiled at him adorably: "And now I am
ready to go out with you," she said,--"go anywhere in the world with
you, Kelly. And I am going to be perfectly happy--if you are."