“You are a fool,” he said. “As for your work, it is clever, fatally clever. When I read what you sent me last month, and saw how clever it was, I knew that you were falling away. That is why I came. Now I have come, I understand. Listen! The secrets of science are won only by those who seek them, like children who in the time of trouble flee to their mother’s arms. Never a mistress in the world’s history has asked more from man than she has asked or has had more to give. She asks your life, your thoughts, your passions—every breath of your body must be a breath of desire for her and her alone. You think that you can strut about the world, a talking doll, pay court to women, listen to the voices that praise you, smirk your way through the days, and all the time climb. My young friend, no! I tell you no! Don’t interrupt me. I am going to speak my say and go.”
“Go?” Saton repeated. “Impossible! I am willing to work. I will work now. I simply thought that as the morning was so fine we might walk for a little time in the sunshine. But that is nothing.”
Naudheim shook his head.
“Not one word do I speak of those things that are precious to me, in this house,” he declared. “I tell you that its atmosphere would choke the life out of every thought that was ever conceived. You may blind others, even yourself, young man,” he went on, “but I know. You are a renegade. You would serve two mistresses. I am going.”
“You shall not,” Saton declared. “This is absurd. Come,” he added, trying to draw his arm through his visitor’s, “we will go into another room if this one annoys you.”
Naudheim stepped back. He thrust Saton away contemptuously. He was the taller of the two by some inches, and his eyes flashed with scorn as he turned toward the door.
“I leave this house at once,” he said. “I was a fool to come, but I am not such a fool as you, Bertrand Saton. Don’t write or come near me again until your sham house and your sham life are in ruins, and you yourself in the wilderness. I may take you to my heart again then. I cannot tell. But to-day I loathe you. You are a creature of no account—a foolish, dazzled moth. Don’t dare to ring your bells. I need no flunkeys to show me the way to the door.”
Naudheim strode out, as a prophet of sterner days might have cast the dust of a pagan dancing hall from his feet. Saton for a moment was staggered. His composure left him. He walked aimlessly up and down the room, swinging his gloves in his hand, and muttering to himself.
Then Rachael came in. She walked with the help of two sticks. She seemed gaunter and thinner than ever, yet her eyes had lost little of their fire, although they seemed set deeper in the caverns of her face.
“Naudheim has gone,” she said. “What is wrong, Bertrand?”