I remembered reading of the English poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti that when he lost his wife he placed beside her in the coffin the manuscript of the poems that she had inspired, but later did not hesitate to violate her grave to get them back and publish them. How many artists pluck out their tenderest memories to offer them to the crowd! They invoke glory, but vanity more often is the spirit that leads them.
Vanity, vanity! It is the motive of so many lives! I too chose it rather than the greatest love. There is the whole story.
A little later I had a chance to compare my attitude with Raymonde’s. A series of old French dances was arranged by Mme. de Saunois. Against her wishes, but upon my insisting, she had figured in a gavotte. A society journal asked permission to photograph her.
“If she agrees,” I thought, “that will be my revenge.”
At bottom I was certain that she would refuse, which she did, much to the chagrin of the other dancers, who could not forgive her for depriving the public of their simperings. The gavotte, in the journal, was replaced by a minuet, which admitted of but two persons, and no more; and people avoided thereafter giving her a part in any presentation for fear she might stand in the way of that publicity that was so useful, they assured themselves, to their charity.
As for myself I saw in it another failure.
* * *
At that time, I was interested in the first experiments in aviation, still of questionable success, just as I had formerly been enamoured of automobiling. She would not have selected this field for me, but at the same time she refused to turn me aside from it. She saw that it appealed strongly to my activities, which in-door work could not satisfy and which needed some out-door strife more closely allied to sport.
“If I fly,” I said to her, “you will not be afraid?”
“Oh, yes, I shall.”