II
Paul Goddard, after he had returned from Bayreuth, gave his musical friends much pain by his indifference to old tastes. His mother, Mrs. Goddard of Madison Square, was not needlessly alarmed. She told her friends that Paul always had been a butterfly, sipping at many pretty arts. She included among these fine arts, girls. Paul's devotion to golf and a certain rich young woman gave her fine maternal satisfaction. "He stays away from that odious Bohemian crowd, and as long as he does that I am satisfied. Paul is too much of a gentleman to make a good musician."
During the winter she saw little of her son. His bachelor dinners were pronounced models, but the musical mob he let alone. "Paul must be going in for something stunning," they said at his club, and when he took off his moustache there was a protest.
The young man was not pervious to ridicule. He had found something new and as he was fond of experimenting and put his soul into all he did, was generally rewarded for his earnestness. He met Mrs. Arthur Vibert at the reception of a portrait-painter, and her type being new to him, resolved to study it.
Presently he went to the art galleries with the lady, and to all the piano recitals he could bid her. He called several times and admired her husband greatly; but she snubbed this admiration and he consoled himself by admiring instead the intellect of the wife.
"I suppose," she confided to him one February afternoon at Sherry's, "I suppose you think I am not a proper wife because I don't sit home at his feet and worship my young genius?"
Paul looked at her strong, ugly face and deep iron-colored eyes, and smiled ironically.
"You don't go in for that sort of thing, I suppose. If you did love him would you acknowledge it to any one, even to yourself—or to me?"
Ellenora flushed slightly and put down her glass.
"My dear man, when you know me better you won't ask such a question. I always say what I mean."