“Were I to judge from the bizarre themes that you select, I should be tempted to fear that the wizard spell of opium evoked some of these strangely beautiful creations of your brush. What suggested this picture?”
“You merely wish to complete your diagnosis of my psychological condition? If so, there is no reason why I should hesitate to tell you that while I was playing one of Chopin’s Nocturnes the significance of the Polish ‘Zäl’ perplexed me. In striving to analyze it, Coleridge’s ‘Melancholy’ occurred to my mind, and teased and haunted me until I wrought it out palpably. My work there means more than his fragment, and includes something which I suppose Chopin meant by that insynonymous word ‘Zäl.’”
Standing under the arch, with one hand holding back the lace drapery, the other hanging nerveless at her side, she looked as weird as any of her ideal creations; and, in the greenish seashine breaking through the dense foliage of the trees about the house, her wan face, snowy muslin dress, and floating white ribbons, seemed unsubstantial as the figures on 186 the wall. To-day there was no spot of color in face or dress, save the azure gleam of the large, brilliant ring, on her uplifted hand; and, as Dr. Grey scrutinized her appearance, he found it difficult to realize that blood pulsed in that marble flesh, and warm breath fluttered in that firm, frigid mouth. Glancing around the rooms, he said,—
“Solitude is indeed a misnomer for a home peopled with such creations as adorn these walls.”
“No. Have you forgotten the definition of Epictetus? ‘To be friendless is solitude.’”
“I hope, madam, that you may never find yourself in that unfortunate category, and certainly there are—”
“Sir, I know what Michael Angelo felt when he wrote from Rome, ‘I have no friends; I need none.’”
She interrupted him with an indescribably haughty gesture, and an anomalous spasm of the lips that belonged to no known class of smiles.
“On the contrary, Mrs. Gerome, the hunger for true friends has rendered you morose and cynical.”
He did not shrink from the wide eyes that flashed like blue steel in moonshine; and as his own, calm, steady, and magnetic, dwelt gravely on her face, he fancied she winced, slightly.