“I don’t know about that,” bristled Gerald.
“No, you don’t, but I do. You see, it was Janvier.”
The younger man started. “Not Janvier, the famous Dr. Janvier!”
“Yes, the Dr. Janvier. And no finer fellow ever lived. I’ve been thankful ever since that I didn’t let his luck in love stand between us as friends. Oh, of course, I sulked in my studio a few weeks, and took on a deep cynicism about life and love. But nobody seemed to notice my airs, so I gave ’em up, and picked out the prettiest wedding-present I could find for Anita.”
“And of course you had your work—”
“Indeed I had! My career was very much on my mind, those days!” He smiled at young ambition, and dexterously flicked a lengthened cigar ash into the fireplace. “But I suffered, too, don’t think I didn’t suffer! And strange as you may find it, that pair comforted me. To be sure, it never works out so, in books; but it was so, with us. The Janviers had me with them often, after their marriage. As I look back on it, I see that it was all far more beautiful than I could know, then. They were rare souls, both.”
“Did Janvier’s fame come early in life?”
“Yes, but he was too busy and quixotic to take much note of it. I first met him when I was making my studies for that confounded Emancipation group, and we became friends at once, because of my subject. He was interested in the welfare of the negroes, and gave up a lot of his time to charitable work among them. He used to bring me different types of colored men as models; I’ve often told you how I studied thirty-five different darkies for those reliefs on the pedestal. In our leisure, when we had it, Janvier and I would discuss racial traits, and so on.”
“New Yorker?”
“Yes, but of Canadian ancestry. His father was one of the early lumber kings, and left him a lot of money; otherwise, he couldn’t have given so much unpaid service among the negroes. I never knew a human being so frantically possessed with the idea of justice for all the world.”