When I looked at Gordon, he was still staring, and by this time I thought I knew the reason of his visits. Beyond a peradventure Frances was the lodestone that attracted him. Did her wonderful features suggest to him a new and greater picture? Was he ruminating over the plan of some masterpiece and seeking inspiration from her? It seemed probable indeed. When the idea comes to me for a novel, I am apt to moon about, searching the recesses of my mind, digging in the depths of my experience, staring into a vacancy peopled only by faint shadows that begin to gather form and strength and, finally, I hope, some attributes of humanity. At such times I often fail to recognize friends on the street or, even, I may attempt to read books upside down. Is it possible that Gordon suffers from similar limitations and needs to muse and toil and delve before he can bring out the art that is in him?
Only yesterday I saw in the paper that he led a cotillon at the Van Rossums. Moreover, at the Winter Exhibition I had the shock of my life. I hurried there to see again the "Mother and Child," instead of which I found his signature on the portrait of a railroad president. The papers spoke of it as a wonderful painting, and one of them reproduced it. I freely acknowledge that it deserves all the encomiums lavished upon it, for it is a bold and earnest piece of work. But he has never done anything like the picture of Frances.
I met him there and looked at him, questioningly. He understood me at once.
"I'll get half the financial big guns now," he told me coolly, and left me to greet a millionaire's bride.
I am not so foolish as to think he can be in love with Frances, and I doubt very much whether he is in love with any one else, in spite of the gossip that has reached me. No, he must simply be thinking of some great composition with which he expects, in his own good time, to take the world by storm. And yet, what if I should be mistaken? The mere idea makes me feel very cold and uncomfortable, for no reason that I know of.
When he finally took his leave, he thanked Frieda for playing to us, and said good-by to Frances as perfunctorily as he does everything else. We began to clean up the teacups, and Frieda folded the frivolous little tablecloth she has contributed to my outfit and put it away, while Frances and I quarreled.
"I am not going," she said firmly.
"You are utterly mistaken," I insisted, "and you're a bold, mad, rebellious creature. You will go at once and put on your best hat, and your cloak, and dab powder on your nose, if it will make you happy, and come along like a good child."
"But what is the use of my paying board to Mrs. Milliken and then having you spend money for dinners at restaurants?" she objected.
"The use is obvious. It affords us the joy of permitting ourselves, once in a blue moon, to behave like spendthrifts; it allows us to indulge in the company of the young and ambitious, as well as of the old and foolish. Moreover, an occasional change of diet was recommended by Hippocrates. Who are you to rebel against the most ancient and respectable medical authority, pray?"