“I really must get out of this habit of poking my nose into other people’s motives,” Sylvia told herself. “I’m like a horrid little boy with a new penknife. Arthur could fairly say to me that I forced myself upon him. I did really. I went steaming into the Auburn Hotel like a salvage-tug. There’s the infernal side of obligations—I can’t really quite free myself from the notion that Arthur ought to be grateful to me. He’s in a false position through no fault of his own, and he’s behaving beautifully. It’s my own cheap cynicism that’s to blame. I wish I could discover some mental bitter aloes that would cure me of biting my mind, as I cured myself of biting my nails.”
Sylvia was very glad that Arthur succeeded in getting an engagement that spring to act, and that she did not; she was really anxious to let him feel that she should be dependent on him for a while. The result would have been entirely satisfactory but for one flaw—the increase in Arthur’s sense of his own artistic importance. Sylvia would not have minded this so much if he had possessed enough of it to make him oblivious of the world’s opinion, but it was always more of a vanity than a pride, chiefly concerned with the personal impression he made. It gave him much more real pleasure to be recognized by two shop-girls on their afternoon out than to be praised by a leading critic. Sylvia would have liked him to be equally contemptuous of either form of flattery, but that he should revel in both, and actually esteem more valuable the recognition accorded him by a shop-girl’s backward glance and a nudge from her companion seemed to be lamentable.
“I don’t see why you should despise me for being pleased,” Arthur said. “I’m only pleased because it’s a proof that I’m getting known.”
“But they’d pay the same compliment to a man with a wen on his nose.”
“No doubt, but also to any famous man,” Arthur added.
Sylvia could have screamed with irritation at his lack of any sense of proportion. Why could he not be like Jack Airdale, who had never suffered from any illusion that what he was doing, so far as art was concerned, was not essentially insignificant? Yet, after all, was she not being unreasonable in paying so much attention to a childish piece of vanity that was inseparable from the true histrionic temperament?
“I’m sorry, Arthur. I think I’m being unfair to you. I only criticize you because I want you to be always the best of you. I see your point of view, but I was irritated by the giggles.”
“I wasn’t paying the least attention to the girls.”
“Oh, I wasn’t jealous,” she said, quickly. “Oh no, darling Arthur, even with the great affection that I have for you, I shall never be able to be jealous of your making eyes at shop-girls.”
When Arthur’s engagement seemed likely to come to an end in the summer, they discussed plans and decided to take a holiday in the country, somewhere in Maine or Vermont. Arthur, as usual, set the scene beforehand, but as he set it quite in accord with Sylvia’s taste she did not mind. Indeed, their holiday in Vermont on the borders of Lake Champlain was as near as she ever got to being perfectly happy with Arthur—happy, that is, to the point of feeling like a chill the prospect of separation. Sylvia was inclined to say that all Arthur’s faults were due to the theater, and that when one had him like this in simple surroundings the best side of him was uppermost and visible, like a spun coin that shows a simple head when it falls.