Anne, however, resented all this. She loved Joan less than Glenn did and with more reason. But if Joan was mean, of little account, then what of Anne? No. She preferred to think her rival something better than shoddy. So pride was in it, and pain too, when she answered Glenn hotly, “Joan has taste, and knows and cares a lot about the things she pretends to know and care about. Look at her own collection of oils! And how many people hasn’t she made! Brenda Loring, for instance. And now she’s doing everything she can to encourage Charlie Frye, they say. This picture—Well, Hugh probably showed it to her in a bad light and on top of his hundredth and first proposal. She merely took her boredom out on ‘Noon.’ Doesn’t that explain it?”
“You always stand up for females, Anne, whether you hate the particular one being criticized or not, I notice. But supposin’ you’re justified this time,—then why doesn’t the pussy own up now, say she never got a good look at the thing, instead of howling all over the place that Hugh never showed it to her at all? Why is Hugh to be the goat! That’s awfully sporting of her, isn’t it! Why! At college any number of fellows have tried to razz me about it already! I suppose I owe that to friend Prescott directly,—to Joan, though indirectly.
“Do you know, Anne, Prescott’s in danger of losing his diploma, I’m afraid, all on account of Joan? I never see him any more. He’s here in New York or at Holly every other day or so. And even his new novel has gone on the rocks. He hasn’t done a stroke for weeks. Perhaps he’s jealous of Hugh, and that’s why he’s made such a point of spreading this story about ‘Noon’ and Hugh, since the papers all came out with the exhibition stuff. Shouldn’t wonder if the press will get hold of it any minute now! Wouldn’t that be just silly!”
Brother and sister looked very much alike at the moment, absorbed in their individual angers, hands behind their backs, gazing up unseeingly at the radiant world in the frame before them.
But the next minute Anne laughed, not without genuine sweetness, and murmured, “Glenn! Take a glance at Ariel. And forget Joan.”
Ariel was standing not far off, her face lifted toward a picture. But she seemed not so much a girl viewing a picture in an art gallery, as a girl who had come down to a beach of yellow sands and was standing looking out at a reef with spray fountaining against it,—who might, in a moment, throw herself down there in the sun, and dream. If she did, out of her body would rise her spirit and dance on the crystal air. Look! There was the spirit already dancing,—where the sun in the picture above threw a white haze across the rocks.
Glenn sang, under his breath,
“Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands:
Curtsied when you have, and kiss’d