When Gerald asked Mrs. Hawthorne to sit for him, she stared in his face without a word.

“Don’t be afraid,” he hastened to reassure her; “I engage to paint a portrait you will like.”

She felt herself blush for the dismay she had not been able to conceal, and to hide this embarrassment she lifted to her face–not the handkerchief or the bouquet with which beauty is wont to cover the telltale signal in the cheek, but a wee dog, as white as a handkerchief and no less sweet than a bouquet. She rubbed her nose fondlingly in the soft silk of his breast, while, tickled, he tried, with baby growls and an exposure of sharp pin teeth, to get a bite at it.

Gerald looked on with simple pleasure. Because he had given Aurora that dog. On the day of making a scene because she was to receive a dog from Hunt he had set to work to find one for her himself, the prior possession of which would make it natural to decline Charlie’s, if, as Gerald doubted, Charlie’s offer had been anything more than facile compliment. And now, instead of the torment to his nerves of seeing her fondle and kiss a brute of Charlie’s, he had the not disagreeable spectacle of her pressing to her warm and rosy face an animal that related her caresses, even if loosely and distantly, to a less unworthy object. Sour and sad, dried up and done with women, a man still has feelings.

183It would be unfair not to add that something better than primeval jealousy actuated Gerald, at the same time as, no doubt, some tincture of that. A sort of impersonal delicacy made the idea disagreeable to him of a dear, nice woman cherishing with the foolish fondness such persons bestow on their pets the gift of a friend whom she, in taking his loyalty for granted, overrated, as he thought.

The dog he had selected to present to her belonged to a breed for which he had respect as well as affection, crediting to Maltese terriers, besides all the sterling dog virtues, a discretion, a fineness of feeling, rare enough among humans. That Gerald kept no dog was due to the fact that he was still under the impression of the illness and death of his last, Lucile’s pet and his mother’s, who had been his companion until a year or two before, a senile, self-controlled little personage of the Maltese variety.

Having decided to give Mrs. Hawthorne a dog, Gerald had spent some hours watching the several components of one litter as they disported themselves in the flagged court of a peasant house, and had fixed upon one dusty ball of fluff rather than another upon solid indications of character.

Snowy after strenuous purifications at the hands of Giovanna, sweet-smelling from the pinch of orris powder rubbed in his fur, and brave with a cherry ribbon, he was taken from the breast of Gerald’s overcoat and deposited in the hands of Aurora, whose delight expressed itself in sounds suggestive of an ogreish craving to eat the little beast, interspersed with endearments of dim import, such as, “Diddums! Wasums! Tiddledewinkums!” Estelle’s did the same. There was no difference in the affection the two instantly bestowed on this dog. Aurora remarked 184later on that Busteretto couldn’t be blamed for not knowing which was his mother.

Sensitively timid, yet bold in his half dozen inches with curiosity of life and the exuberant gladness of youth, Busteretto could frisk and he could tremble. He was cowed by the sight of fearful things, beetles and big dogs, but next moment, with budding valor, would dash to investigate them. He twinkled when he ran, his bark lifted him off his four feet. Withal something exquisite marked him even among Maltese puppies, which Aurora felt without art to define it. She said he reminded her of the new moon when it is no bigger than a fingernail. If with the tip of his rose-petal tongue he laid the lick of fondness and approval on the end of your nose, you felt two things: that the salute had come directed by the purest heart-guidance, and that the nose had something about it subtly right. You were flattered.

When Gerald encouraged Mrs. Hawthorne to decide for herself how she should like to be painted, with what habiliments, appurtenances and surroundings, she decided first of all to have Busteretto on her lap,–but that was afterward given up: he wiggled. Then her white ostrich fan in her hand, her pearls around her neck, her diamond stars in her hair, a cluster of roses at her corsage, her best dress on, and an opera-cloak thrown over the back of her chair.

Catching, as she thought, a look of irony on Gerald’s face, she had a return of suspicion.

“See here,” she said, observing him narrowly, “there’s no trick about this, is there?”

“Not the shadow of one. Please trust me, Mrs. Hawthorne. This is to be a portrait entirely satisfactory as 185well as entirely resembling. It is like you to desire to be painted with your plumes and pearls and roses, and they are very becoming. I shall put them in with pleasure. I know you do not believe I can paint a portrait to suit you. Very well. Grant me the favor of a chance to try. We shall see.”

It was true that she did not believe it, but she was so willing to hope. One of the upstairs rooms at the back was chosen for the sittings because the light through its windows was the least variable. The necessary artist’s baggage was brought over from Gerald’s, and the work began.

Charcoal in hand, he regarded Mrs. Hawthorne quietly and lengthily through half-closed eyes.

“You have not one good feature,” he said, as if thinking aloud.

“Oh!”–she started out of the pose they had after much experimenting decided upon–“oh! is that the way you’re going to pay me for keeping still on a chair by the hour?”

“You have no eyebrows to speak of.”

“What do you mean? Yes, I have, too; lots of them; lovely ones. Only they don’t show up. They’re fair, to match my hair.”

“You are undershot.”

“What’s that?”

“Your lower jaw closes outside of your upper.”

“Oh, but so little! Just enough to take the curse off an otherwise too perfect beauty.”

As she curled up the corners of her mouth in an affected smirk, he quickly shifted his glance, with a horrible suspicion that she was crossing her eyes. As she had pronounced 186the word perfect “parfect,” he presumed that she was making herself look, for the remainder, like Antonia. It was her latest vaudeville turn, imitating Antonia. He was careful not to look again in her direction until she had stopped doing what annoyed him furiously. He could not hope to make her understand to what point the debasing of beauty to brutal comic uses wounded him.

“Faultless features,” he went on after a time, in commentary on his earlier remark, “do not by any means always make a beautiful face,” politely leading her to suppose he meant that to be without them was no great misfortune.

Estelle came into the room for company. She brought her sewing, one of those elegant pieces of handiwork that give to idleness a good conscience. Gerald felt her delicately try to get acquainted with him. She was not as altogether void of intellectual curiosity as her friend. She would seem to care about discovering further what sort of man he was mentally, what his ideas were on a variety of subjects. Also, but even more delicately, to interest him, just a little bit, in her own self and ideas.

He was grateful to her, and did what he could to show himself responsive. With the portrait began the period of a less perfunctory relation between them. They had talks sometimes that Aurora declared, without trace of envy, were ’way above her head.

Estelle was waking to an interest in the art and history of the Old World. She was “reading up” on these things. She was also “working at” her French, and would in a little systematic way she had excuse herself at the same hour daily, saying she must go and get her lessons. Not feeling quite the enterprise to study two languages at one 187time, she had given the preference to French, as being the more generally useful in Europe.

Gerald now made the acquaintance of a new member of the household. She came into the room bearing a small tray with a hot-water pot and a cup. She took this to Aurora, who helped herself to plain hot water, explaining:

“I am trying to ‘redooce.’ This is good for what ails me, they say. But I could never in the world think of it. Clotilde thinks of it for me, and she’s that punctual! Clotilde, you’re too punctual with this stuff. You don’t suppose I like it?”

“But think, Madame, of the sylph’s form that it will give you!” replied Clotilde, in respectably good English.

“I do think of it. Give me another cup. Mr. Fane, this is Miss–no, I won’t launch on that name. It’s Italo’s sister, who has saved our lives and become our greatest blessing.”

Clotilde exposed in smiling a fine array of white teeth. She was not at all like her brother, but well-grown, white and pink beneath her neat head-dress of crisp black hair. She impressed Gerald as belonging to a different and better class. If she were vulgar, it was at least not in the same way. She appeared like that paradox, a lady of the working-class, with a distinguishing air of capability, good humor, and openness. The latter Gerald was not disposed absolutely to trust, but he was glad to trust all the rest.

No sooner had she left the room than Aurora and Estelle in one voice started telling him about her. He learned that she and Italo were not what they called “own” brother and sister, but only half. Their father, being left by the death of his wife with a young family on his hands, had in feeble despair married the cook, become the father of 188one more child, and died. Italo was that latest born. The children of the first wife had then been taken by her folks, while their step-mother retained her own chick, assisted from a distance by the prouder portion of the family to educate and give him a trade. He had chosen an art instead, and by it was rising in the world. There had been published a waltz of his composing, dedicated by permission to a name with a coronet over it. He lived with and supported his good soul of a mother, and saw something of his half-brethren, all of them through lack of fortune condemned to small ways of life, like himself.

Clotilde, the best-hearted, was his favorite and he hers. She recognized his gifts, she further regarded him as a man of spirit, or wit.

“It must be,” reflected Gerald, “that the fellow can stir up a laugh.”

He knew him only as a fixture at the piano, but could well accommodate the idea of a species of buffoonery to that boldly jutting nose of his. He fancied that maldicenza, gossip further spiced with backbiting, would form the chief baggage of his wit. If he possessed sharp ears, his opportunities for picking up knowledge of other people’s affairs were certainly unusual. He passed from house to house, playing accompaniments, drumming for dancing, so insignificant on his screw-stool that many no doubt talked before him as if nobody had been there.

Gerald did not dislike Ceccherelli, really, only had him on his nerves in relation to Aurora. He felt him, indeed, rather likeable at a distance, as part of a story; he had the good point of being an individual. Gerald was in general touched to benevolence at sight of a poor devil elated by his little draught of success. To Ceccherelli without a doubt 189the patronage of the wealthy American represented success. Ceccherelli pulling out his gold watch was a disarming vision.

Gerald cherished a hope, born of curiosity, that he might witness some exhibition of Ceccherelli’s spirito, or wit, and upon an evening when the pianist dropped in after dinner was on the alert for manifestations....

It may here be inserted that upon being asked to remain for dinner Gerald had artfully delayed answering until he had made sure that Clotilde did not dine with the ladies. Their familiarity had made him fear it. Highly as he was prepared to esteem Clotilde, the meal would, with her making the fourth, have lost for him those points on account of which he prized it. But he gathered that she found it more convenient to take her meals in private. In rejoicing for himself, he rejoiced also for her, eating in holy peace, as he pictured her doing, the dishes of her country, cooked with oil and onion; pouring the wine of her country from a good fat flask such as never found its place on the table of the strangers.

To go back: Gerald when after dinner the pianist came to make music for the ladies, was hoping for some example of that brightness for which he had a reputation with three persons, possibly more. But Ceccherelli remained on the piano-stool and never once raised his voice. Estelle and Aurora went in turns to chat with him there, but not one witty word reached Gerald. Then he had the sense to see that it was he, Gerald, who acted as a spoil-feast, a dampener. He got an outside view of himself, stiff, dry, critical, ungenial-looking. It was not to be wondered at that the flow of spirits was dried up in the man of temperament by his vicinity. He suspected, catching a side-look from the 190pianist’s small brown eye, that the little man who did not care to speak aloud in his hearing yet had plenty to say on the subject of him in a different entourage.

This notwithstanding, it was only when Gerald got whiffs and echoes of Ceccherelli through Aurora that he called him a pest.

“Italo says,” she began, after a silence such as often fell while she posed and he painted, “that Mr. Landini has the evil eye.”

“What rubbish!”

“Glad to hear you say so. I don’t believe there’s any such thing, myself. But Italo swears there is, and has told me story upon story to prove it. He wants me to wear a coral horn and poke it at Mr. Landini whenever he comes near me.”

“Wherefore a coral horn? You can more cheaply, and quite as effectually, make horns of your fingers, like this. I should strongly advise you not to let the object of this precaution catch you doing it.... I should think, Mrs. Hawthorne, you would be ashamed to let that inferior little individual corrupt your mind.”

Fancying it teased him, she pursued, “What do you think he says besides? That Mr. Landini’s color isn’t natural, but a juice, he says, a dye, that he stains himself with.”

“For the love of Heaven, why?”

“That’s what I wanted to know. Why go to all that trouble for the sake of looking like a darkey? But Italo says, says Italo, that it gives him more success with the ladies. His difference from other men obliges them to look at him, then his eyes do the rest.”

“I only hope your laugh is sincere, Mrs. Hawthorne, and 191that you do not allow this poisonous nonsense to affect your feelings towards–”

“Don’t be afraid. If I did, I shouldn’t be having him to dinner, should I? And he’s coming to-night.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Quite a party. You weren’t asked, because we know you now. You would have managed by sly questions to find out who else was coming and then you wouldn’t have come.”

“Well, who is coming? There is nothing sly about that.”

“I sha’n’t tell you. This much I will tell you, though–” she added with the frankness usual to her, “I don’t look forward to it much.”

It was on the end of his tongue to ask next morning how her dinner had gone off, but on second thoughts he left it for her to speak of when she was ready.

She at first appeared much as on other days, but when she had lapsed into silence and fallen into thought her expression became a shade gloomy. He had noticed that when her eyes were rather more grey than blue it was the sign of a cloud in her sky.

“Might one ask the lady sitting for her picture to look pleasant?” he said.

“Yes, yes,” she remembered herself; “I will try to look pleasant. But I feel cross.”

“Well?... What went wrong with your dinner?”

“Oh, I made a fool of myself.”

“That sounds serious. Was it?”

“Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know. I don’t suppose it was really serious.... But the whole thing has made me cross.”

192She labored under an urgent necessity to tell somebody all about it, that was evident.

“You see,” she plunged without preamble into her confidence, “from the beginning, I didn’t want that party! I love to have folks to dinner, any number, all the time. You know I just love a jollification. But this was different, as I knew it was going to be. It began with Charlie Hunt telling me–or, not exactly telling, I forget how it came out–that yesterday was his birthday. I said, ‘Come and celebrate with us!’ I was thinking of making a big cake and sticking it full of pink candles. And from that simple beginning, blessed if I know how it happened, except my always wanting to say yes to anything anybody proposes, it came to be a regular dinner-party, the kind they give over here, with courses and wines and finger-bowls, all the frills, and twelve people, not friends of mine at all, barely acquaintances, but people Charlie Hunt thought it would be nice to ask. Well, it was my fault, every bit of it, and nobody else’s. I’ve no business to say all those joyful yeses if I don’t mean them. Good enough for me if I have to swallow my pill afterwards without so much as making a face. It wasn’t so bad, after all, everything went all right, thanks to Clotilde and Charlie. Only I wasn’t having much fun. Charlie had planned how people should sit, and Mr. Landini was on one side of me, and he was making himself terribly agreeable. He means all right, but his talk, as I guess you know, isn’t a bit my kind. And last night, I don’t mind telling you–” her voice dropped to a note confidentially low, “with his compliments and incinerations, you’d almost have thought he was sweet on me. Only I know better. And so, as I say, I wasn’t having much fun. Then I don’t know what got 193into me. They were passing the fruit. I got up and went to the sideboard and took one of those fine hot-house looking peaches out of our permanent assortment that needs dusting every few days, and I came back to my seat and offered that marble fruit with a fetching smile to Mr. Landini. He looked as if he felt I was bestowing a very particular favor. He took it–and it dropped out of his hand on to the plate with a crash that laid it in smithereens.... You can see why I am cross.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised, dear woman, if he were cross, too.”

“He was perfect! I respected him! Liked him better than I ever had before! I never saw anything so well done as the way he carried it off! I was never so uncomfortable in all my life, though we united in laughing, ha, ha.... Charlie would have taken my head off, if he had dared, afterwards in a corner of the parlor. But the first word he said, I cut in, short as pie-crust, ‘Young man,’ I said, ‘if you aren’t careful I shall sit on you. Do you know how much I weigh?’ And I meant it.”

Gerald prudently placed a paint-brush across his mouth, and shut his teeth on it as on a bridle-bit, to excuse his saying nothing in the way of comment on what he had heard.

Mrs. Hawthorne told him next day at the first opportunity, like one eager to make reparation for an injustice, “It’s all right now! A beautiful plate came yesterday afternoon from Ginori’s where my dinner-set was bought–a plate, you know, to match the one that got broken. As if I cared anything about the old plate! And along with it Mr. Landini’s card, with such a nice message written on it. Don’t you think it white in him? When it was all my fault. And in the evening Charlie Hunt came and was 194sweet as pie. We’re just as good friends as ever. I’m ashamed of myself for having felt so put out. Forget anything I said that didn’t seem quite kind. He’s all right. It’s me that’s crochety.... Isn’t that picture far enough along for you to let me see it?”

“No, Mrs. Hawthorne.”

“Will you let me see it when it’s far enough along?”

“No.”

“I think you’re real mean. How much longer will it take to finish it?”

“Does sitting bore you so much?”

“Land, no! Bore me? I perfectly love it! It’s like taking a sea-voyage with some one. You see more of them in a week or two than you would in the same number of years on land. I’m getting to feel I know you quite well.”

“Wasn’t it clever of me to think of the portrait?”

“Go ’way! D’you see anything green in my eye? As I was saying, I’m getting to know you pretty well. You get mad awful’ easy, don’t you? But you don’t hate people, really, nearly as much as I do, that it takes a lot to make mad. There are people in this world that I hate–oh, how I hate ’em! I hate ’em so I could almost put their eyes out. But you, Stickly-prickly, when it comes right down to it, I notice you make a lot of allowance for people. Do you know, when it comes right down to it, you’re one of the patientest persons I know. I’d take my chances with you for a judge a lot sooner than I’d like to with loads of people who aren’t half so ready to call you a blame’ fool.”

“While you have been making these valuable discoveries in character, what do you suppose I have been doing, Mrs. 195Hawthorne?” asked Gerald, after the time it would take to bow ceremoniously in acknowledgement of a compliment.

“Oh, finding out things about me, I suppose.”

“Not things. One thing. I had known you for some length of time before my felicitous invention of the portrait, you remember, and as you are barely more elusive than the primary colors, or more intricate than the three virtues, I did not suppose I had anything more to learn. But I had. It can’t be said I didn’t suspect it. I had seen signs of it. I smelled it, as it were. But I had no idea of its extent, its magnitude, its importance. It is simply amazing, bewildering, funny.”

“For goodness’ sake, what?” she cried, breathless with interest.

“I can’t tell you. It would ill become me to say. The least mention of it on my part would be the height of impertinence. The thing is none of my business. Be so kind as to resume the pose, Mrs. Hawthorne, and to keep very, very still, like a good girl. Do not speak, please, for some time; I am working on your mouth.”

Gerald had indeed been astonished, amused, appalled. He had in a general way known that Mrs. Hawthorne was prodigal, the impression one received of her at first sight prepared one to find her generous; but he had formed no idea of the ease and magnificence with which she got rid of money.

In the time so far devoted to painting her he had grown quite accustomed to a little scene that almost daily repeated itself–a scene which he, busy at his side of the room, was presumably not supposed to see, or, if he saw it, to think anything about.

196Clotilde would come in with a look of great discretion, a smile of great modesty, and stand hesitating, like a person with a communication to make, but not sufficient boldness to interrupt. Aurora, always glad to drop the pose, would excuse herself to Gerald and ask what Clotilde wanted. Clotilde would then approach and speak low,–not so low, however, but that in spite of him messages and meanings were telegraphed to Gerald’s brain. The look itself of the unsealed envelopes in Clotilde’s hand was to Gerald’s eye full of information. She would sometimes extract and unfold a document for Aurora to look at; but Aurora would wave it aside with a careless, “You know I couldn’t read it if I wanted to.” At the end of the murmured conference Aurora would say, “Will you go and get my porte-monnaie? It’s in my top drawer,” and when this had been brought, her dimpled hand would take from it and give to Clotilde bills of twenty, of fifty, of a hundred francs, hardly appearing to count. Sometimes she would say: “I’m afraid I haven’t enough. I shall have to make out a check.”

Gerald’s flair, and knowledge of his Florence, enabled him perfectly to divine what was in question. He was only puzzled as to why these transactions should not have taken place at a more private hour, and acutely observed that they took place when they could, this being when Estelle was out of the way. Clotilde also had flair.

After Clotilde had retired, Aurora one morning, having imperfectly understood what her money was wanted for, puckered her brows over the letters that, through an oversight, had remained in her hands. She held one out to Gerald to translate. It was from the united chorus-singers of Florence, a simple, direct, and ingenuous appeal for a 197gratuity. Another letter was from a poor young girl who wished for money to buy her wedding outfit. Another from a poor man out of work.

Gerald could have laughed. But he did not; nor made any remark. He did not dislike seeing those voracious maws stuffed with a fat morsel. He knew as much of the real poverty in Florence as of the innocent impudence of many poor, with their lingering medieval outlook upon the relations of the poor and the rich. He sided with those against these. Singularly, perhaps, he regarded himself as belonging among the latter, the rich. He was glad the chorus-singers and the sposina and the worried padre di famiglia were going to be made glad by rich crumbs from Aurora’s board. But he could not help uneasiness for the future, when the famished locusts, still approaching single scout, should precipitate themselves in battalions, when the whole of Florence should have got the glad tidings and gathered impetus....

Well, Clotilde was there. Clotilde would know pertinent discourses to hold to the brazen beggars when their shamelessness passed bounds. Meanwhile Gerald could see that she enjoyed this distributing of good things among her fellow-citizens. Not that she was strongly disposed to charity. He did not believe she gave away anything of her own, but she loved to see Aurora give. After a life spent in a home where the lumps of sugar were counted and the coffee-beans kept under lock and key, it attracted her like wild, incredible romance.

It would have hurt her to behold this unproductive output, no doubt, had it not been a mere foreigner who lost what her own people gained,–money, besides, that could never have benefited her, and that came nearer to benefiting 198her when spent in that manner than in another. Clotilde, loyal in service, giving more than good measure, offering all the pleasant fruits of a visible devotion, could yet not be expected to have–or, to state it more fairly, was not supposed by Gerald to have–any real bowels for this outsider, who might for one thing be drawing from bottomless gold-mines, or, if she were not, would suffer a ruin she had richly deserved. And might it not in aftertimes profit her, Clotilde, to have been instrumental to this person and that in obtaining money from the millionaire? The shops recognized such a title to reward, and offered it regularly to such private middlemen as herself for a careful guiding of the dispensing hand, and this without the feeling on any side that it was the payment of the unjust steward.

Gerald did not in the least despise Clotilde, poor Clotilde, with her nose like a little white trumpet between her downy pink and white cheeks, for this businesslike outlook and use of her position. It would have been different if she had been a friend and gentleman.

The portrait did not progress rapidly. Gerald was not hurrying. On Gerald’s lips as he painted there played an ambiguous smile, privately derisive of his work and the fun he was having.

No problems, no effort, none of those searching doubts of oneself that produce heart-sickness; nor yet any of those exaltations that cause one to forget the hour of meals. Curious that it should have been fun all the same!... His reply to which was that only a very poor observer could think it curious that the lower man within a man should feel it fun to be indulged. Fortunately, a natural limit was set to this Capuan period.

199He would come from the winter world into the room which the American kept enervatingly warm, a pernicious practice. One could not deny, however, that the body relaxed in it with a sense of well-being, after steeling itself to resist the insidious Italian cold, exuding from damp pavements and blown on the sharp tramontana; that cold which is never, if measured by the thermometer, severe, but against which clothing seems ineffectual. The blood does not react against it; the blood shrinks away, and stagnates around the heart.

He would change his coat for a velveteen jacket, not in order to be picturesque, but to keep his coat-cuffs clean. He was as particular as an old maid, Aurora told him, before he had been caught absentmindedly wiping paint off on his hair.

The fair model would get her chair-legs into correspondence with certain chalk-marks on the carpet, be helped to find her pose, and having made herself comfortable, turn on him blue eyes, with a faint brown shadow under them–blue eyes that wore a sheepish look until she presently forgot she was sitting for her picture. She was pressed to keep her opera-cloak over her shoulders, lest she take cold in her dÉcolletÉ; the high fur collar made an effective background for her face. Then he would fall to painting, and the hours of the forenoon would fly.

An amiable woman would now and then make a remark, easily jocular. Another amiable woman–soothing presences, both–would answer. Or he would answer; there would be an interlude of familiar talk, rest, and laughing, and throwing a ball for a scampering puppy. At noon an end to labor. He would remain for lunch, that meal of cheery luxury, immorally abundant. After it he would 200still linger in this house, bright and warm with fires, smoking cigarettes in a chair as luxuriously soft as those curling clouds on which are seen throning the gods in ceiling frescos, and grow further day by day into the intimacy of the amiable women. In full afternoon they would ask him if he would go out with them in their carriage, take an airing, and return for dinner; or, if he obstinately declined, might they set him down somewhere. He would make a point of not accepting, and hurry off afoot with his damp umbrella.

Although Gerald had enlightened contempt for the sensuous comfort he was taking in the fleshpots of the Hermitage, there was in it one element which he did not analyze merely to despise.

He was aware of it most often after Estelle had left the room. He settled down then for a time of heightened well-being. It was observable that the sitter also took on a faintly different air. Often at that moment she would vaguely, purposelessly, smile over to him, and he would smile in absolute reciprocity. They would not seize the opportunity for more personal exchange of talk. All would go on as before. He had nothing to say to Aurora or she to him that could not have been said before an army of witnesses. Yet it was to him as if a touch of magic had removed an impediment, and the mysterious effluvium which made the vicinity of Mrs. Hawthorne calming, healing to him, had a chance to flow and steep his nerves in a blessed quiet, a quiet which–one hardly knows how to describe such a thing–was at the same time excitement.

Gerald did not really care for talking. He could, it was true, sit up all night with Vincent Johns, discussing this subject and that; he could split hairs and wander into 201every intricacy of argument with men and artists; with women too he could sometimes be litigious. The bottom truth was nevertheless that he did not care for talking. It had happened to him to sigh for a world where nobody talked forever and ever.

What he cared for was faces. They were what discoursed to you, told the veracious story of lives and emotions–not lamely, as words do, mingling the trivial with the significant, but altogether perfectly. It rested with you to understand.

Mrs. Hawthorne in talk was cheap as echoes of a traveling-circus tent: you had the simple fooling of the clown, the plain good sense of the farmer’s wife, the children’s ebullient joy in the show. But Mrs. Hawthorne in silence and abstraction was allied to things august and mysterious, things far removed from her own thoughts. These, while she sat in her foolish jewels, unsuitable by day, were very likely busy with her house, her dressmaker, the doings of her little set, gossip, the personal affairs–who knows?–of the painter painting her. But, profounder than words or thoughts, Mrs. Hawthorne’s essential manner of being related her to those forces of the world which the ancient mind figured in the shapes of women. There was something present in her of the basic kindness of old Earth, who wants to feed everybody, is ready to give her breast to all the children. Her robust joyousness reposed, one felt, on a reality, some great fact that made angers and anxieties irrational.

The student of faces could not have maintained that he got these impressions of his sitter through his eyes. It was more, after all, like a reflection received on the sensitive plate of his heart.

202One day Gerald began to hurry. He had had enough of it. The portrait was finished in a few hours. The ladies were not permitted to see it. They were made to wait until it was varnished and framed in one of the great, bright Florentine frames of which they were so fond.

Gerald, while they took their first long, rapt look, stood at one side, with a smile like a faun’s when a faun is Mephistophelian.

Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no words to express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove.

Estelle echoed this exclamation, but her charmed surprise did not ring so true, if any one had been watchful enough to seize the shade of difference. Because, not having been made to give a promise, she had from time to time taken a look privately at the painting during its progress. Aurora had known of this and been sorely tempted to do the same, but had resisted the temptation, afraid of Gerald’s bad opinion.

“My soul!” she murmured, really much moved.

Of course she knew that the portrait flattered her; but she felt as Lauras and Leonoras and Lucastas no doubt felt when their poets celebrated them under ideal forms in which their friends and families may have had trouble to recognize them. The pride of having inspired an immortal masterpiece must have stirred their hearts to gratitude toward the gifted beings able to see them disencumbered from their faults, and fix them for the contemplation of their own eyes and their neighbors’ as they had been at the best moment of their brightest hour.

Aurora, clasping her hands in a delight that could find no words to express it, made a sound like the coo of a dove