“Well, ‘ordinary’s’ the wrong word, of course. But you know very well what I mean, Joan. She’s not artistic. She has nothing in her of the genius, or the artist. Or rather, her genius is her personality. I thought I said it all before. She’s of the spirit.... Love—Life.... It would be rotten to turn it into dancing. All that life.”
“‘Life’ doesn’t seem at all descriptive of that child to me, Hugh. She’s about the quietest—”
“I’m not talking about liveliness. Well, look at the sun, here on the back of my hand. Still, isn’t it? Quiet? But it’s life! Ariel’s quiet is like that.”
Joan was silent, quiet herself for a minute. But not the kind of quiet Hugh had just explained to her. She asked, finally, “Are you sorry, then, that her father has advertised Ariel, as he has, in his pictures? Do you think it is cheapening? And would you think that being a famous dancer would cheapen her? Is that what you’re afraid of?”
He hesitated. “I’m afraid I used to feel that way,” he acknowledged. “The first time it was suggested that Ariel might get all this publicity she has been getting, I did think it a shame. I wanted to protect her from it. But I’ve outgrown that angle of it. I know now that that’s a false, inherited attitude. Not sound. You yourself, Joan, let Enderly and those other literary fellows vote you the most beautiful mother in the East for the Ideal Perfume Company, Inc., the other day, and your picture’s even in the subway entrances now, and in the advertising sections of every magazine, that’s worth the name, I’ve picked up this month. I’ve had to get over the prejudice, you see. And I’ve succeeded, I think. No, it isn’t that at all now that convinces me that Ariel shouldn’t go in for dancing. I—”
But Joan cried, laughing shakily, “So you don’t think publicity is cheap, and what’s convinced you is because I’ve allowed it? So I still am a criterion, Hugh? Really?”
“But of course.”
“That’s nice. I’m glad. And Hugh, I gave the money to the home for Crippled Children. That’s what made me consent to the silly business,—that, and the help it might just possibly be to Prescott’s sales.”
“Good for you! But I knew it was all right.”
“Only see here, Hugh! Have I been too stupid? You aren’t going to tell me that that—that girl whose name you can’t keep off your funny old tongue is the wonderful person we were talking about, when we agreed that you ought to marry some one else, and have children of your own? I’m not going to believe that, even if you say so. It simply couldn’t—”