Stefan's initial and astonishing success was not to be repeated that winter. The great Constantine, anxious to benefit by the flood tide of his client's popularity, had indeed called at the studio in search of more material, but after a careful survey, had decided against exhibiting “Tempest” and “Pursuit.” Before these pictures he had stood wrapped in speculation for some time, pursing his lips and fingering the over-heavy seals of his fob. Mary had watched him eagerly, deeply curious as to the effect of the paintings. But Stefan had been careless to the point of rudeness; he had long since lost interest in his old work. When at last the swarthy little dealer, who was a Greek Jew, and had the keen, perceptions of both races, had shaken his head, Mary was not surprised, was indeed almost glad.

“Mr. Byrd,” Constantine had pronounced, in his heavy, imperfect English, “I think we would make a bad mistake to exhibit these paintings now. Technically they are clever, oh, very clever indeed, but they would be unpopular; and this once,” he smiled shrewdly, “the public would be right about it. Your DanaË was a big conception as well as fine painting; it had inspiration—feeling—” his thick but supple hands circled in emphasis—“we don't want to go back simply to cleverness. When you paint me something as big again as that one I exhibit it; otherwise,” with a shrug, “I think we spoil our market.”

After this visit Stefan, quite unperturbed, had turned the two fantasies to the wall.

“I dare say Constantine is right about them,” he said; “they are rather crazy things, and anyhow, I'm sick of them.”

Mary was quite relieved to have them hidden. The merman in particular had got upon her nerves of late.

As the winter advanced, the Byrds' circle of acquaintances grew, and many visitors dropped into the studio for tea. These showed much interest in Stefan's new picture, a large study of Mary in the guise of Demeter, for which she was posing seated, robed in her Berber gown. Miss Mason in particular was delighted with the painting, which she dubbed a “companion piece” to the DanaË. The story of Constantine's decision against the two salon canvases got about and, amusingly enough, heightened the Byrds' popularity. The Anglo-Saxon public is both to take its art neat, preferring it coated with a little sentiment. It now became accepted that Stefan's genius was due to his wife, whose love had lighted the torch of inspiration.

“Ah, Mr. Byrd,” Miss Mason had summed up the popular view, in one of her rare romantic moments, “the love of a good woman—!” Stefan had looked completely vague at this remark, and Mary had burst out laughing.

“Why, Sparrow,” for so, to Miss Mason's delight, she had named her, “don't be Tennysonian, as Stefan would say. It was Stefan's power to feel love, and not mine to call it out, that painted the DanaË,” and she looked at him with proud tenderness.

But the Sparrow was unconvinced. “You can't tell me. If 'twas all in him, why didn't some other girl over in Paris call it out long ago?”

“Lots tried,” grinned Stefan, with his cheeky-boy expression.

“Ain't he terrible,” Miss Mason sighed, smiling. She adored Mary's husband, but consistently disapproved of him.

Try as she would, Mary failed to shake her friends' estimate of her share in the family success. It became the fashion to regard her as a muse, and she, who had felt oppressed by Stefan's lover-like deification, now found her friends, too, conspiring to place her on a pedestal. Essentially simple and modest, she suffered real discomfort from the cult of adoration that surrounded her. Coming from a British community which she felt had underestimated her, she now found herself made too much of. A smaller woman would have grown vain amid so much admiration; Mary only became inwardly more humble, while outwardly carrying her honors with laughing deprecation.

For some time after the night of Constance's reception, Stefan had shown every evidence of contentment, but as the winter dragged into a cold and slushy March he began to have recurrent moods of his restless irritability. By this time Mary was moving heavily; she could no longer keep brisk pace with him in his tramps up the Avenue, but walked more slowly and for shorter distances. She no longer sprang swiftly from her chair or ran to fetch him a needed tool; her every movement was matronly. But she was so well, so entirely normal, as practically to be unconscious of a change to which her husband was increasingly alive.

Another source of Stefan's dissatisfaction lay in the progress of his Demeter. This picture showed the Goddess enthroned under the shade of a tree, beyond which spread harvest fields in brilliant sunlight. At her feet a naked boy, brown from the sun, played with a pile of red and golden fruits. In the distance maids and youths were dancing. The Goddess sat back drowsily, her eyelids drooping, her hands and arms relaxed over her chair. She had called all this richness into being, and now in the heat of the day she rested, brooding over the fecund earth. So far, the composition was masterly, but the tones lacked the necessary depth; they were vivid where they should have been warm, and he felt the deficiency without yet having been able to remedy it.

“Oh, damn!” said Stefan one morning, throwing down his brush. “This picture is architectural, absolutely. What possessed me to try such a conception? I can only do movement. I can't be static. Earth! I don't understand it—everything good I've done has been made of air and fire, or water.” He turned an irritable face to Mary.

“Why did you encourage me in this?”

She looked up in frank astonishment, about to reply, but he forestalled her.

“Oh, yes, I know I was pleased with the idea—it isn't your fault, of course, and yet—Oh, what's the use!” He slapped down his pallette and made for the door. “I'm off to get some air,” he called.

Mary felt hurt and uneasy. The nameless doubts of the autumn again assailed her. What would be the end, she wondered, of her great adventure? The distant prospect vaguely troubled her, but she turned easily from it to the immediate future, which held a blaze of joy sufficient to obliterate all else.

The thought of her baby was to Mary like the opening of the gates of paradise to Christian the Pilgrim. Her heart shook with joy of it. She passed through her days now only half conscious of the world about her. She had, together with her joy, an extraordinary sense of physical well-being, of the actual value of the body. For the first time she became actively interested in her beauty. Even on her honeymoon she had never dressed to please her husband with the care she now gave to the donning of her loose pink and white negligÉes and the little boudoir caps she had bought to wear with them. That Stefan paid her fewer compliments, that he often failed to notice small additions to her wardrobe, affected her not at all. “Afterwards he will be pleased; afterwards he will love me more than ever,” she thought, but, even so, knew that it was not for him she was now fair, but for that other. She did not love Stefan less, but her love was to be made flesh, and it was that incarnation she now adored. If she had been given to self-analysis she might have asked what it boded that she had never—save for that one moment's adoration of his genius the day he completed the DanaË—felt for Stefan the abandonment of love she felt for his coming child. She might have wondered, but she did not, for she felt too intensely in these days to have much need of thought. She loved her husband—he was a great man—they were to have a child. The sense of those three facts made up her cosmos.

Farraday had asked her in vain on more than one occasion for another manuscript. The last time she shook her head, with one of her rare attempts at explanation, made less rarely to him than to her other friends.

“No, Mr. Farraday, I can't think about imaginary children just now. There's a spell over me—all the world waits, and I'm holding my breath. Do you see?”

He took her hand between both his.

“Yes, my dear child, I do,” he answered, his mouth twisting into its sad and gentle smile. He had come bringing a sheaf of spring flowers, narcissus, and golden daffodils, which she was holding in her lap. He thought as he said good-bye that she looked much more like Persephone than the Demeter of Stefan's picture.

In spite of her deep-seated emotion, Mary was gay and practical enough in these late winter days, with her small household tasks, her occasional shopping, and her sewing. This last had begun vaguely to irritate Stefan, so incessant was it.

“Mary, do put down that sewing,” he would exclaim; or “Don't sing the song of the shirt any more to-day;” and she would laughingly fold her work, only to take it up instinctively again a few minutes later.

One evening he came upon her bending over a table in their sitting room, tracing a fine design on cambric with a pencil. Something in her pose and figure opened a forgotten door of memory; he watched her puzzled for a moment, then with a sudden exclamation ran upstairs, and returned with a pad of paper and a box of water-color paints. He was visibly excited. “Here, Mary,” he said, thrusting a brush into her hand and clearing a place on the table. “Do something for me. Make a drawing on this pad, anything you like, whatever first comes into your head.” His tone was eagerly importunate. She looked up in surprise, “Why, you funny boy! What shall I draw?”

“That's just it—I don't know. Please draw whatever you want to—it doesn't matter how badly—just draw something.”

Mystified, but acquiescent, Mary considered for a moment, looking from paper to brush, while Stefan watched eagerly.

“Can't I use a pencil?” she asked.

“No, a brush, please, I'll explain afterwards.”

“Very well.” She attacked the brown paint, then the red, then mixed some green. In a few minutes the paper showed a wobbly little house with a red roof and a smudged foreground of green grass with the suggestion of a shade-giving tree.

“There,” she laughed, handing him the pad, “I'm afraid I shall never be an artist,” and she looked up.

His face had dropped. He was staring at the drawing with an expression of almost comic disappointment.

“Why, Stefan,” she laughed, rather uncomfortably, “you didn't think I could draw, did you?”

“No, no, it isn't that, Mary. It's just—the house. I thought you might—perhaps draw birds—or flowers.”

“Birds?—or flowers?” She was at a loss.

“It doesn't matter; just an idea.”

He crumpled up the little house, and closed the paintbox. “I'm going out for awhile; good-bye, dearest”; and, with a kiss, he left the room.

Mary sat still, too surprised for remonstrance, and in a moment heard the bang of the flat door.

“Birds, or flowers?” Suddenly she remembered something Stefan had told her, on the night of their engagement, about his mother. So that was it. Tears came to her eyes. Rather lonely, she went to bed.

Meanwhile Stefan, his head bare in the cold wind, was speeding up the Avenue on the top of an omnibus.

“Houses are cages,” he said to himself. For some reason, he felt hideously depressed.

“I called on Miss Berber last evening,” Stefan announced casually at breakfast the next morning.

“Did you?” replied Mary, surprised, putting down her cup. “Well, did you have a nice time?”

“It was mildly amusing,” he said, opening the newspaper. The subject dropped.