He had found his pipe and was musingly filling it. Claudia waited in silence.
“At first,” he began again, “I was afraid their language was too hard for me—that I should never quite know what they were driving at; they seemed to cold-shoulder me, to be bent on shutting me out. But I was bound I wouldn’t be beaten, and now, to-day”—he paused a moment to strike a match—“when I went to look at those things of mine it all came over me in a flash. By Jove! it was as if I’d made them all into a big bonfire to light me on my road!”
His wife was trembling with a kind of sacred terror. She had been afraid to pray for light for him, and here he was joyfully casting his whole past upon the pyre!
“Is there nothing left?” she faltered.
“Nothing left? There’s everything!” he exulted. “Why, here I am, not much over forty, and I’ve found out already—already!” He stood up and began to move excitedly about the room. “My God! Suppose I’d never known! Suppose I’d gone on painting things like that forever! Why, I feel like those chaps at revivalist meetings when they get up and say they’re saved! Won’t somebody please start a hymn?”
Claudia, with a tremulous joy, was letting herself go on the strong current of his emotion; but it had not yet carried her beyond her depth, and suddenly she felt hard ground underfoot.
“Mrs. Davant—“ she exclaimed.
He stared, as though suddenly recalled from a long distance. “Mrs. Davant?”
“We were to have met her—this afternoon—now—“
“At the gallery? Oh, that’s all right. I put a stop to that; I went to see her after I left you; I explained it all to her.”