the central current of her grievance.
Claudia looked from one to the other.
“For not going to see you?”
“For not going to see his pictures!” cried the other nobly.
Claudia colored and Keniston shifted his position uneasily.
“I can’t make her understand,” he said, turning to his wife.
“I don’t care about myself!” Mrs. Davant interjected.
“I do, then; it’s the only thing I do care about,” he hurriedly protested. “I meant to go at once—to write—Claudia wanted to go, but I wouldn’t let her.” He looked helplessly about the pleasant red-curtained room, which was rapidly burning itself into Claudia’s consciousness as a visible extension of Mrs. Davant’s claims.
“I can’t explain,” he broke off.
Mrs. Davant in turn addressed herself to Claudia.
“People think it’s so odd,” she complained. “So many of the artists here are anxious to meet him; they’ve all been so charming about the pictures; and several of our American friends have come over from London expressly for the exhibition. I told every one that he would be here for the opening—there was a private view, you know—and they were so disappointed—they wanted to give him an ovation; and I didn’t know what to say. What am I to say?” she abruptly ended.
“There’s nothing to say,” said Keniston slowly.
“But the exhibition closes the day after tomorrow.”
“Well, I sha’n’t close—I shall be here,” he declared with an effort at playfulness. “If they want to see me—all these people you’re kind enough to mention—won’t there be other chances?”
“But I wanted them to see you among your pictures—to hear you talk about them, explain them in that wonderful way. I wanted you to interpret each other, as Professor Wildmarsh says!”
“Oh, hang Professor Wildmarsh!” said Keniston, softening the commination with a smile. “If my pictures are good for anything they oughtn’t to need explaining.”
Mrs. Davant stared. “But I thought that was what made them so interesting!” she exclaimed.
Keniston looked down. “Perhaps it was,” he murmured.
There was an awkward silence, which Claudia broke by saying, with a glance at her husband: “But if the exhibition is to remain open tomorrow, could we not meet you there? And perhaps you could send word to some of our friends.”
Mrs. Davant brightened like a child whose broken toy is glued together. “Oh, do make him!” she implored. “I’ll ask them to come in the afternoon—we’ll make it into a little tea—a five o’clock. I’ll send word at once to everybody!” She gathered up her beruffled boa and sunshade, settling her plumage like a reassured bird. “It will be too lovely!” she ended in a self-consoling murmur.
But in the doorway a new doubt assailed her. “You won’t fail me?” she said, turning plaintively to Keniston. “You’ll make him come, Mrs. Keniston?”
“I’ll bring him!” Claudia promised.
IV
When, the next morning, she appeared equipped for their customary ramble, her husband surprised her by announcing that he meant to stay at home.
“The fact is I’m rather surfeited,” he said, smiling. “I suppose my appetite isn’t equal to such a plethora. I think I’ll write some letters and join you somewhere later.”
She detected the wish to be alone and responded to it with her usual readiness.
“I shall sink to my proper level and buy a bonnet, then,” she said. “I haven’t had time to take the edge off that appetite.”
They agreed to meet at the Hotel Cluny at mid-day, and she set out alone with a vague sense of relief. Neither she nor Keniston had made any direct reference to Mrs. Davant’s visit; but its effect was implicit in their eagerness to avoid each other.
Claudia accomplished some shopping in the spirit of perfunctoriness that robs even new bonnets of their bloom; and this business despatched, she turned aimlessly into the wide inviting brightness of the streets. Never had she felt more isolated amid that ordered beauty which gives a social quality to the very stones and mortar of Paris. All about her were evidences of an artistic sensibility pervading every form of life like the nervous structure of the huge frame—a sensibility so delicate, alert and universal that it seemed to leave no room for obtuseness or error. In such a medium the faculty of plastic expression must develop as unconsciously as any organ in its normal surroundings; to be “artistic” must cease to be an attitude and become a natural function. To Claudia the significance of the whole vast revelation was centred in the light it shed on one tiny spot of consciousness—the value of her husband’s work. There are moments when to the groping soul the world’s accumulated experiences are but stepping-stones across a private difficulty.
She stood hesitating on a street corner. It was barely eleven, and she had an hour to spare before going to the Hotel Cluny. She seemed to be letting her inclination float as it would on the cross-currents of suggestion emanating from the brilliant complex scene before her; but suddenly, in obedience to an impulse that she became aware of only in acting on it, she called a cab and drove to the gallery where her husband’s pictures were exhibited.
A magnificent official in gold braid sold her a ticket and pointed the way up the empty crimson-carpeted stairs. His duplicate, on the upper landing, held out a catalogue with an air of recognizing the futility of the offer; and a moment later she found herself in the long noiseless impressive room full of velvet-covered ottomans and exotic plants. It was clear that the public ardor on which Mrs. Davant had expatiated had spent itself earlier in the week; for Claudia had this luxurious apartment to herself. Something about its air of rich privacy, its diffusion of that sympathetic quality in other countries so conspicuously absent from the public show-room, seemed to emphasize its present emptiness. It was as though the flowers, the carpet, the lounges, surrounded their visitor’s solitary advance with the mute assurance that they had done all they could toward making the thing “go off,” and that if they had failed it was simply for lack of cooperation. She stood still and looked about her. The pictures struck her instantly as odd gaps in the general harmony; it was self-evident that they had not cooperated. They had not been pushing, aggressive, discordant: they had merely effaced themselves. She swept a startled eye from one familiar painting to another. The canvases were all there—and the frames—but the miracle, the mirage of life and meaning, had vanished like some atmospheric illusion. What was it that had happened? And had it happened to her or to the pictures? She tried to rally her frightened thoughts; to push or coax them into a semblance of resistance; but argument was swept off its feet by the huge rush of a single conviction—the conviction that the pictures were bad. There was no standing up against that: she felt herself submerged.
The stealthy fear that had been following her all these days had her by the throat now. The great vision of beauty through which she had been moving as one enchanted was turned to a phantasmagoria of evil mocking shapes. She hated the past; she hated its splendor, its power, its wicked magical vitality…. She dropped into a seat and continued to stare at the wall before her. Gradually, as she stared, there stole out to her from the dimmed humbled canvases a reminder of what she had once seen in them,
