“Really? Would you die too, like the people in poetry?” she asked, delighted, rubbing her round young cheek against his in appreciation of the appropriateness of his answer. But then, examining him at her leisure, a doubt crossed her mind, and as she spanned the muscles of his arm with her little fingers she shook her head. “A man is so strong, so wise, and has so much more to do in the world than a woman, that I think he could not die off just when it pleased him,” she said thoughtfully. “There are always Nounas in the world, I think, just like flies and flowers, and silly useless things like that. If one goes, one knows it must go, and one does not miss it. And a man sees that, and he says, ‘Ah, it is a pity!’ and then he goes on living, and the grass grows up on the grave, and he forgets. After all it was only a little flower, only a little fly. And so while we are alive we must just be sweet, we must just fly about and buzz, for when the little grave is made we don’t leave any trace. That is what I think,” ended Nouna with a half-grave, half-playful nod.
But George could not take the speech playfully at all. This light but resolute refusal to take herself in earnest, which he ascribed to the paralysing influence of Eastern traditions, was the great barrier to all higher communion between them than that of caresses. By the expression of his face Nouna scented the sermon from afar, and as he opened his mouth to speak, she thrust her hand between his lips as a gag, and continued, laughing:
“Don’t look like that. I won’t hear what you have to say. You may be very wise, but I must be listened to sometimes. Now, I won’t let you speak unless you promise to leave off reading and sing to me.”
George nodded a promise, unable to resist her, and there was an end to the higher education for that evening.
The second string to the young husband’s educational bow was art, in whose refining and ennobling influence he believed dutifully, though without much practical sense of it. He took her to concerts in which she found no acute pleasure, declaring that sitting still so long in one narrow chair tired her, and that she would rather hear him play and sing to her at home. He took her to picture galleries, which would have been a rather penitential exercise for him by himself, but from which he thought her more delicately organized feminine temperament might derive some benefit, “taking it in through the pores” as it were, as boys absorb a love and longing for the hunting-field from the sight of their father’s scarlet coat and hunting crop. Now this experiment had more interesting results. The first place he took her to was the Royal Academy, where she examined the pictures in a dazed silence, which George hoped was reflective admiration; but when they returned home she confessed simply that she did not want to see any more pictures. In the National Gallery, on the other hand, where George took her rather apologetically, with a sort of feeling that this was too “advanced” for her present state of art knowledge, Nouna, at first sight of the frames inclined to be restive, began speedily to show an odd and unexpected pleasure, which deepened before certain Gainsboroughs into childish delight.
“I should like the gentleman who painted that lady to paint me,” she said, when she had gazed long and lovingly at one graceful bygone beauty.
George explained the difficulties in the way of her wish, but was highly pleased with the orthodoxy of her taste.
Later experiences, however, gave a shock to this feeling. The National Gallery having effected her reconciliation with pictorial art, Nouna was praiseworthily anxious to learn more of it, and insisted on visiting every exhibition in London. It then gradually became manifest that she had a marked preference for the works of Continental painters, from the lively delineator of Parisian types of character to the works of the daring artist who presents the figures of sacred history with strong limelight effects.
“They make me see things, and they make me feel things,” was all the explanation she could give of the instinctive preferences of her sensuous and poetical temperament.
Even this was not so distressing as her making exceptions to her indifference to English art in the persons of two artists whom George had always been accustomed to consider legitimate butts for satire. The beautiful, mournful women, with clinging draperies, looking out of the canvas with sadly questioning eyes, imaginative conceptions of an artist who has founded a school plentifully lacking in genius, filled Nouna with grave pleasure, and caused her to turn to George in eager demand for sympathy.