Neva looked at her with a strange, startled expression, as if she were absorbing a new and vital truth, self-evident, astonishing.
"Boris has lived a long time," continued Narcisse. "And women have conquered him so often that they've taught him how to conquer them."
"I don't know much about him, beyond the painting," said Neva. "And I don't care to know."
The silence that fell was constrained. It was with tone and look of shyness more like Neva than like herself that Narcisse presently went on, "I owe a great deal to Boris. He made me what I am.... He broke my heart."
Neva gave her a glance of wonder and fear—wonder that she should be confiding such a secret, fear lest the confidence would be repented. Narcisse's expression, pensive but by no means tragic, not even melancholy, reassured her. "You know," she proceeded, "no one ever does anything real until his or her heart has been broken."
Neva, startled, listened with curious, breathless intentness.
"We learn only by experience. And the great lesson comes only from the great experience."
"Yes," said Neva softly. She nodded absently. "Yes," she repeated.
"When one's heart is broken ... then, one discovers one's real self—the part that can be relied on through everything and anything."
Neva, with studied carelessness, opened a drawer in the stand beside her and began to examine the tips of a handful of brushes. Her face was thus no longer completely at the mercy of a possible searching glance from her friend.