"Oh, it's no use of your trying to say consoling things. She's gone for
good. I was never strong enough to hold her, and so it's come to this
disgraceful smash."
I looked eagerly at Arthur to discover over-mastering sorrow; there was
little. Indeed he looked relieved; his life for nearly a year must have
been a trial and yet I mentally confessed to some disappointment at his
want of deep feeling. I saw that he was chagrined, angry, but not really
heart-hurt. Lucky chap! he was only twenty-two and had all his life
before him. I asked for explanations.
"Oh, Ellenora always said that I never understood her; that I never
could help her to reach the rim of finer issues. I suppose this fellow
Goddard will. At least she thinks so, else she wouldn't have left me.
She said no family could stand two prima-donnas at the same time: as if
I ever posed, or pretended to be as brilliant as she! No, she stifled
me, and I feel now as if I might compose that romanza for my concerto."
I consoled the young pianist; told him that this blow was intended as a
lesson in self-control; that he must not be downcast, but turn to his
music as a consolation; and a whole string of such platitudes. When he
left me I asked myself if Ellenora was not right, after all. Could she
have reached that visionary rim of finer issues--of which she always
prated--with this man, talented though he was, yet a slender reed shaken
by the wind of her will? Besides, his chin was too small.
He could not master her nature. Would she be happy with Paul Goddard,
that bright-winged butterfly of æstheticism? I doubted it. Perhaps the
feminine, receptive composer was intended to be her saving complement in
life. Perhaps she unconsciously cared for Arthur Vibert; and arguing the
question as dispassionately as I could my eyes fell upon "Thus Spake
Zarathustra," and opening the fat unwieldy volume I read:
"Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the
dreams of an ardent woman?"
"Pooh!" I sneered. "Nietzsche was a rank woman-hater;" then I began my
work on Mrs. Beacon's portrait, the fashionable Mrs. Beacon, and tried
to forget all about the finer issues and the satisfied sterility of its
ideals.