"Why it says that--that a woman should be beautiful as the roses are beautiful--without thinking too much about it, you know--just as a man should be strong without thinking too much about his strength, I mean."
"Yes," he agreed, "it says that. But I want you to know that, whatever title it is exhibited under, it will always be, to me, a portrait--the truest I have ever painted."
She flushed with genuine pleasure as she said brightly, "I like you for that. And now let's try it on Conrad Lagrange and Myra Willard. You get him, and I'll run and bring her. Mind you don't let Mr. Lagrange in until I get back! I want to watch him when he first sees it."
When the artist found Conrad Lagrange and told him that the picture was finished, the novelist, without comment, turned his attention to Czar.
The painter, with an amused smile, asked, "Won't you come for a look at it, old man?"
The other returned gruffly, "Thanks; but I don't think I care to risk it."
The artist laughed. "But Miss Andres wants you to come. She sent me to fetch you."
Conrad Lagrange turned his peculiar, baffling eyes upon the young man.
"Does _she_ like it?"
"She seems to."
"If she _seems_ to, she does," retorted the other, rising. "And that's different."
When the novelist, with his three friends, stood before the easel, he was silent for so long that the girl said anxiously, "I--I thought you would like it, Mr. Lagrange."
They saw the strange man's eyes fill with tears as he answered, in the gentle tones that always marked his words to her, "Like it? My dear child, how could I help liking it? It is you--you!" To the artist, he added, "It is great work, my boy, great! I--I wish your mother could have seen it. It is like her--as I knew her. You have done well." He turned, with gentle courtesy, to Myra Willard; "And you? What is your verdict, Miss Willard?"
With her arm around the beautiful original of the portrait, the woman with the disfigured face answered, "I think, sir, that I, better than any one in all the world, know how good, how true, it is."
Conrad Lagrange spoke again to the artist, inquiringly; "You will exhibit it?"
"Miss Andres says that I may--but not as a portrait."
The novelist could not conceal his pleasure at the answer. Presently, he said, "If it is not to be shown as a portrait, may I suggest a title?"
"I was hoping you would!" exclaimed the painter.
"And so was I," cried Sibyl, with delight. "What is it, Mr. Lagrange?"
"Let it be exhibited as 'The Spirit of Nature--A Portrait'," answered Conrad Lagrange.
As the novelist finished speaking, Yee Kee appeared in the doorway. "They come--big automobile. Whole lot people. Misse Taine, Miste' Lutlidge, sick man, whole lot--I come tell you."
The artist spoke quickly,--"Stop them in the house, Kee; I'll be right in,"--and the Chinaman vanished.
At Yee Kee's announcement, Myra Willard's face went white, and she gave a low cry.
"Never mind, dear," said the girl, soothingly. "We can slip away through the garden--come."
When Sibyl and the woman with the disfigured face were gone, Conrad Lagrange and Aaron King looked at each other, questioningly.
Then the novelist said harshly,--pointing to the picture on the easel,--"You're not going to let that flock of buzzards feed on this, are you? I'll murder some one, sure as hell, if you do."
"I don't think I could stand it, myself," said the artist, laughing grimly, as he drew the velvet curtain to hide the portrait.
Chapter XXVII
The Answer
When Aaron King and Conrad Lagrange entered the house to meet their callers from Fairlands Heights, the artist felt, oddly, that he was meeting a company of strangers.
The carefully hidden, yet--to him--subtly revealed, warmth of Mrs. Taine's greeting embarrassed him with a momentary sense of shame. The frothing gush of Louise's inane ejaculations, and the coughing, choking, cursing of Mr. Taine,--whose feeble grip upon the flesh that had so betrayed him was, by now, so far loosed that he could scarcely walk alone,--set the painter struggling for words that would mean nothing--the only words that, under the circumstances, could serve. Aaron King was somewhat out of practise in the use of meaningless words, and the art of talking without saying anything is an art that requires constant exercise if one would not commit serious technical blunders. James Rutlidge's greeting was insolently familiar; as a man of certain mind greets--in public--a boon companion of his private and unmentionable adventures. Toward the great critic, the painter exercised a cool self-restraint that was at least commendable.
While Aaron King, with James Rutlidge and Mr. Taine, with carefully assumed interest, was listening to Louise's effort to make a jumble of "ohs" and "ahs" and artistic sighs sound like a description of a sunset in the mountains, Mrs. Taine said quietly to Conrad Lagrange, "You certainly have taken excellent care of your protege, this summer. He looks splendidly fit."
The novelist, watching the woman whose eyes, as she spoke, were upon the artist, answered, "You are pleased to flatter me, Mrs. Taine."
She turned to him, with a knowing smile. "Perhaps I _am_ giving you more credit than is due. I understand Mr. King has not been in your care altogether. Shame on you, Mr. Lagrange! for a man of your age and experience to permit your charge to roam all over the country, alone and unprotected, with a picturesque mountain girl!--and that, after your warning to poor me!"
Conrad Lagrange smiled grimly. "I confess I thought of you in that connection several times."
She eyed him doubtfully. "Oh, well," she said easily, "I suppose artists must amuse themselves, occasionally--the same as the rest of us."
"I don't think that, '_amuse_' is exactly the word, Mrs. Taine," the other returned coldly.
"No? Surely you don't meant to tell me that it is anything serious?"
"I don't mean to tell you anything about it," he retorted rather sharply.
She laughed. "You don't need to. Jim has already told me quite enough. Mr.
King, himself, will tell me more."
"Not unless he's a bigger fool than I think," growled the novelist.
Again, she laughed into his face, mockingly. "You men are all more or less foolish when there's a woman in the case, aren't you?"
To which, the other answered tartly, "If we were not, there would be no woman in the case."
As Conrad Lagrange spoke, Louise, exhausted by her efforts to achieve that sunset in the mountains with her limited supply of adjectives, floundered hopelessly into the expressive silence of clasped hands and heaving breast and ecstatically upturned eyes. The artist, seizing the opportunity with the cunning of desperation, turned to Mrs. Taine, with some inane remark about the summers in California.
Whatever it was that he said, Mrs. Taine agreed with him, heartily, adding, "And you, I suppose, have been making good use of your time? Or have you been simply storing up material and energy for this winter?"
This brought Louise out of the depths of that sunset, with a flop. She was so sure that Mr. King had some inexpressibly wonderful work to show them.
Couldn't they go at once to the equally inexpressibly beautiful studio, to see the inexpressibly lovely pictures that she was so inexpressibly sure he had been painting in the inexpressibly grand and beautiful and wonderfully lovely mountains?
The painter assured them that he had no work for them to see; and Louise floundered again into the depths of inexpressible disappointment and despair.