“Toto,” said the girl,—she called him Toto sometimes when no one was by,—“beware of that old man and all these people who praise you; there’s nothing so bad for an artist as praise. Art,” she continued, gazing at him and speaking as if she knew all about it, “is always capable of improvement. I mean the artist is. Don’t mind what he says about the canaille—remember Millet; go and get a blouse like a common man, work like a common man. All people are common in art till they have made princes of themselves like Raphael and Michael Angelo.”
“That is what I have been thinking lately,” said the unhappy Toto, imbibing this lesson greedily because it fitted in with his whim, and whims with Toto sometimes lasted for months—Mlle. Dumaresque lasted for three, and cost him sixty thousand francs. “Just what I have been thinking: what is the use of all this life? I’m sick of it. If one could invent a new way of spending money or something new to eat—but it’s just the same old round. I’ve thought of committing suicide, sometimes.”
“Oh, don’t, Toto—don’t speak like that!”
“I won’t; besides, I didn’t think of it seriously.”
“Tell me, Toto,” said Helen, in the voice of a mother speaking to a child, “do you ever think seriously of anything?”
“I think I do,” said Toto, rubbing his cheek against a corner of her sealskin jacket, because it was soft and gratified his sensual nature. “I have thought seriously of running away from here, and living by my painting—seriously.”
A look came into his face that astonished her, a look of iron determination or leaden obstinacy, she could not tell which; but it made her feel sure that if he ever did commit such a folly he would adhere to it till he was famous or, a more probable eventuality, dead.
“For” said Toto, “I have got a queer sort of feeling lately: it’s money-hate. It’s awfully funny, for it’s not exactly money-hate, but it’s a want to make money and not spend it. It’s like a man that wants to dig.”
Helen looked at him proudly.
“Here,” thought she, “is the man breaking out; the boy is dying away. Toto will be a great man yet.” Alas for Helen’s thoughts! What woman can ever understand a man? what woman could ever have understood Toto? Otto Struve alone got him in a true focus, but of that anon.