Lary looked at her, a light dawning in his limpid brown eyes.
“You are the most remarkable woman in the world. You have the insight of a sage ... and the intuition of a poet. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. And in a second you put your finger on the tender spot. It is precisely the feeling I had the first time an editor sent me a check for a poem. You don’t sell things that come out of your soul. To take money for them is like rubbing the bloom from the grape. It leaves your soul shiny and bare.”
“But, Lary, an artist takes money for his pictures. It is bad for his art if he lives by any other means. The painter who has no need to work is almost sure to go stale in a few years. If you had been born when Greece was at the climax of her glory—”
“I would have been an artisan—taking wages for my work, like Apollodorus and Praxiteles—with no more social opportunity and aspiration than an upper servant,” Lary retorted, laughing whimsically. “The Greeks had no illusions about art. It was as closely knit with the kitchen as with the temple. This idea that artists are fit associates for millionaires—that is, for the aristocracy—is purely a figment of modern times. My repugnance for money is not the result of my classical training. It was burned into my mind by the gruelling conflict of opinions between my father and mother. My father and I were born to an age that knows only the money standard. The world—and my mother—are not to blame, if he and I are out of joint with the times.”
“But you won’t let it hurt you, Lary ... let it embitter you?”
“No, sweetheart. I’ll make a joke of it. I’ll tell Ramsay to double his infamous bills.” And Larimore Trench went forth to rob another rich man.
II
Later in the day Laura came to the apartment. It was a dreary February morning and the outlook from the front windows was bleak and cheerless. Eileen had sat for an hour contemplating the waste of sullen water, and Judith had let her alone. She was thinking things out. She would come to her sister for help when she needed it. At times the older woman could follow her thought process by an intuition that was almost uncanny. This morning not a glimmer of light came through. Scarcely had Mrs. Ramsay disposed of her furs and selected her favourite rocker when the girl began, her face whiter than usual and her lips compressed:
“Judith, I am going to tell her. I can’t go on feeling like a dirty sneak.”
“You—what, Eileen?” Laura asked, her hazel eyes opening in wonder.