You are young, handsome, gifted, and unconventional, and all these things appeal to men. You can attract all the admirers you want, and more than you need, to enlarge your ideas of life, and extend your knowledge of human nature.
You say your ambition is to know the world thoroughly,—that it will aid your art.
I think that is true, if you do not pass the border-line and lose your ideals and sacrifice your principles. Once you do that, your art will lose what it can never regain.
And remember this, my dear girl, no human being ever lived or ever will live who gained anything worth having by sacrificing the golden rule. In your search for knowledge of the world, and acquaintance with human nature, keep that motto ever before your soul's sight, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
You say Mr. Gordon said or did nothing in that tête-à-tête luncheon his wife might not have heard or seen, but the fact that he talked entirely about you and art, and other universal subjects, and seemingly avoided any reference to his wife and children, surprised you.
And now you are wondering if you did wrong to accept this invitation. Never accept invitations of any kind from married men, unless the wife or some member of the family is included.
No matter how willing the wife may be to have you enjoy her husband's company, avoid tête-à-tête situations with benedicts.
You say you are not egotistical enough to imagine Mr. Gordon had any hidden motive for wanting to be alone with you, or for seemingly forgetting in his conversation that he was a husband and father. Yet I can see that in a measure it disillusioned you.
You do not ask a man to fling his wife and children at the head of each woman he meets, but you like him to recognize their existence.
You are a young, romantic girl seeking the ideal.