“You have never been anyone else,” he asserted positively. “You were born Linda Condon and you'll die that, except for some extraordinary accident. I can't imagine what it would be—a miracle like quaker-ladies in the Antarctic.”
“It sounds uncomplimentary, and I'm sick of being compared with polar places. What are quaker-ladies?”
“Fragile little flowers in the spring meadows.”
“I'd rather listen to the music than you.”
“That is why loving you is so eternal, why it doesn't fluctuate like a human emotion. You can't exhaust it and rest before a new tide sweeps back; the timeless ecstasy of a worship of God ... breeding madness.”
She failed to understand and turned a troubled gaze to his bitter repression. “I don't like to make you unhappy, Dodge,” she said in a low tone. “What can I do? I am a horrid disappointment to all of you, but most to myself. I can't go over it again.”
“Beauty has nothing to do with happiness,” he declared harshly. He rose, without consulting her wishes; and Linda followed him as he proceeded above, irresistibly drawn to the bronze he was showing in the Rotunda.
It was the head and part of the shoulders of a very old woman, infinitely worn, starved by want and spent in brutal labor. There was a thin wisp of hair pinned in a meager knot on her skull; her bones were mercilessly indicated, barely covered with drum-like skin; her mouth was stamped with timid humility; while her eyes peered weakly from their sunken depths.
“Well?” he demanded, interrogating her in the interest of his work.
“I—I suppose it's perfectly done,” she replied, at a loss for a satisfactory appreciation. “It's true, certainly. But isn't it more unpleasant than necessary?” Pleydon smiled patiently. “Beauty,” he said, with his mobile gesture. “Pity, Katharsis—the wringing out of all dross.”