"'To see Life clearly and see it whole,'" quoted Jean, and her voice shook slightly with the force of her own conviction.
The blood rushed into Franklin Herrick's eyes, and he shook his head as if to clear them from the mist. Again he felt that Jean was eluding him, slipping away from the niche in which he had just placed her. But this time she was flitting ahead of him, tantalizing in her promised capacity to feel. He wanted to put his hands on her strong shoulders and force something into those clear gray eyes, filled now with confusion at her own unusual enthusiasm.
"We'll straighten out all the philosophy of the world some other night," he said abruptly. "But now I want to show you Flop's latest. And, whether he's happy or not, it's great stuff."
Herrick brought the canvas from the easel, propped it on a table and lit a small bronze sconce, which he held so that the light fell on the picture and on Jean's head.
From the shadow of a dusky, smudged wood, the nude figure of a woman stood out with startling whiteness. At her feet a little brook ran over white pebbles. There was a feeling of moonlight among the trees, as if somewhere a full moon were shining in the warm night. But the little brook, deep in the heart of the wood, was cold, and the woman longed and at the same time dreaded to enter it. The warm blackness of the trees held her, like the embrace of an unseen lover. But the cool voice of the brook called steadily and one felt sure that in the end she would go. She was bent a little forward as if listening to the brook, so that the curves of her slim body, the small, white breasts, partly veiled in the red-gold hair that fell about her shoulders, leaned into the darkness.
"She's alive," Herrick whispered, and going to the canvas passed his hand lightly from the red-gold hair to the small, white feet deep in the damp grass.
The blood flooded Jean's face. Instantly Herrick was angry with himself, but the call had been too strong. He covered his anger with surprise as he looked quietly at Jean.
"Come. I want to show you the rest of the things, too."
Holding the sconce high, he moved about the room, pointing out his favorites among Flop's work.
Jean followed, making flat comments on the things he showed her. She wanted desperately to go back to the first picture, and discuss it in a rational manner, for there was nothing in it to shock or repel. It was too perfect for that. Again she felt that she had been crude and childish, just as she had been about the painted women and the sordid ugliness of The Coast, and that she had fallen short of Herrick's estimate and disappointed him. She wanted to say something, but did not know in what words to open the subject nor how to make Herrick understand without. Slowly they made the rounds of the studio and came again to the glass door opening on the balcony. Herrick put out the light.