She gave several pleased little nods. “Nearly all. Some were too much for me. I shall give them up until I grow into them. I get only a few every quarter; so it grows gradually,” she explained.
“Why, some of this is material I ought to know myself—and don’t; books I’ve promised myself to read.... How did you get to know there were such things? Bardek, again?”
Oh, no! The advertisements of the Atlantic Monthly; the book chat in Harper’s, and the Nation; and especially the remarks of wise persons—like Mr. Blynn!—who have no idea that “a chiel’s among ye takin’ notes.” There was really a note-book with publishers’ names and prices; one had to buy carefully so as to get the best for the money (Pennsylvania-German thrift cropping out here, thought Blynn).
“That one,” she touched a volume, “he’s too much for me. Everybody is talking about him. The magazines are full of it; and you and Mr. Leopold are always quoting. That made me buy. I got good binding, too. Don’t you just love fine bindings?” She stroked the leather cover gently. “But I suppose I’ll have to know more before I can understand.”
Browning was the big man in those days; he was receiving his belated hero-worship and, as usual, it was noisy and overdone.
Blynn ran the pages over and stopped at “Andrea del Sarto.” Then he read. It needed only a touch of explanation here and there to set the pathetic monologue and make clear the simple story of this great failure.
The poem was plain enough now, she said; and it was beautiful; but why did Andrea leave his great work, give up all that was really dear in life, and in his middle days suffer poverty and disgrace, all for that worthless Lucrezia?
Why, indeed! Blynn promised to show her reproductions of Sarto’s paintings, especially the fine figure of young John the Baptist; then she might understand; for Lucrezia was the model for that spiritual face. She must have had qualities to inspire a picture like that. A man would give up much for a woman who called him, even—this is the puzzle of life—even though he knew she were worthless.
“Do you suppose,” she asked, “that in the first years of their marriage they were—” She wanted to say “lovers,” but that’s a hard word to say aloud in English. Except on the stage or in novels, we avoid direct reference to love. We seem to be half ashamed of it. “Do you think,” she began again, “they really—cared?”
“I should think so,” he guessed. “Most folks do, for awhile. We can’t get into the private history of families; but from the outside it seems that—uh—affection,” he was also shying at the word, “soon dies out. It rather frightens one to look on the hundreds of indifferent or possibly discordant couples who, no doubt, were one time violently—uh—enamored of each other. It doesn’t seem possible to keep the thing up!”