"I have," was Armstrong's quiet answer.
"Then—you agree?"
Armstrong shook his head, without taking his eyes off Atwater's.
Atwater shrugged his shoulders.
"Fallen women have been known to reform," said Armstrong. "But there's no recorded case of a fallen man's reforming. I find nothing to attract me, Atwater, in the lot of the most splendid of these male Messalinas you and your kind maintain in such luxury as officials, public and private. I belong to myself—and I shall continue to belong to myself."
Atwater's smile was cynical; but there was the cordiality of respect in the hand clasp he abruptly forced on Armstrong, as he parted from him.
XXIII
"THE WOMAN BORIS LOVED"
At last Neva had made a portrait she could look at without becoming depressed. For the free workman there is always the joy of the work itself—the mingling of the pain which is happiness and the happiness which is pain, that resembles nothing so much as what a woman experiences in becoming a mother. But, with the mother, birth is a climax; with the artist, an anti-climax. The mother always sees that her creation is good; her critical faculty is the docile echo of her love. With the artist, the critical faculty must be never so mercilessly just as when he is judging the offspring of his own soul; he looks upon the finished work, only to see its imperfections; how woefully it falls short of what he strove and hoped. The joy of life is the joy of work—the prize withers in its winner's hand.
After her first year under Raphael, Neva's portraits had been successful—more successful, perhaps, than they would have been if she had had to succeed in order to live. She suspected that her work was overpraised; Raphael said not, and thought not, and his critical faculty was so just that neither vanity nor love could trick it. But when she finished the portrait of Narcisse—Narcisse at her drawing table, her face illumined from within—her eyes full of dreams, one capable yet womanly hand against her smooth, round cheek, the background a hazed, mysterious mirage of fairylike structures—when this portrait was done, Neva looked on it and knew that it was good. "It might be better," said she. "It is far, far from best—even my best, I hope. But it is good."