In himself he imagined the capacity to be quite dead. He loved his son: yes—but he was beginning to see that he loved him for certain qualities he had read into him, and that perhaps after all——. Well, perhaps after all the sin for which he was now atoning in loneliness was that of having been too exclusively an artist, of having cherished George too egotistically and self-indulgently, too much as his own most beautiful creation. If he had loved him more humanly, more tenderly and recklessly, might he have not put into his son the tenderness and recklessness which were beginning to seem to him the qualities most supremely human?
XV
A week or two later, coming home late from a long day’s work at the office, Campton saw Mme. Lebel awaiting him.
He always stopped for a word now; fearing each time that there was bad news of Jules Lebel, but not wishing to seem to avoid her.
To-day, however, Mme. Lebel, though mysterious, was not anxious.
“Monsieur will find the studio open. There’s a lady: she insisted on going up.”
“A lady? Why did you let her in? What kind of a lady?”
“A lady—well, a lady with such magnificent furs that one couldn’t keep her out in the cold,” Mme. Lebel answered with simplicity.
Campton went up apprehensively. The idea of unknown persons in possession of his studio always made him nervous. Whoever they were, whatever errands they came on, they always—especially women—disturbed the tranquil course of things, faced him with unexpected problems, unsettled him in one way or another. Bouncing in on people suddenly was like dynamiting fish: it left him with his mind full of fragments of dismembered thoughts.
As he entered he perceived from the temperate atmosphere that Mme. Lebel had not only opened the studio but made up the fire. The lady’s furs must indeed be magnificent.