“The woman in whom a man sees God,” he proceeded irritably:
“'La figlia della sua mente, l'amorosa, idea.'”
“Oh,” she cried, wrung with a sharp obscure hurt. “I know that, I've heard it before.” Her excitement faded at her absolute inability to place the circumstances of her memory. The sound of the words vanished, leaving no more than the familiar deep trouble, the disappointing sensation of almost grasping—Linda was unable to think what.
“After all, you are my wife.” He had recovered his normal shy humor. “I can prove it. You are the irreproachable mother of our unsurpassed children. You have a hopeless vision—like this Simon's—of seeing me polished and decently pressed; and I insist on your continuing with the whole show.”
Her mind arbitrarily shifted to the thought of her father, who had walked out of his house, left—yes—his family, without any intimation. Then, erratically, it turned to Vigné, to Vigné and young Sandby with his fresh cheeks and impending penniless years acquiring a comprehension of the bond market. She said, “I wonder if she really likes Bailey?” Arnaud's energy of dismay was laughable, “What criminal folly! They haven't finished Mother Goose yet.”
XXII
Linda, who expected to see Pleydon's statue of Simon Downige finished immediately in a national recognition of its splendor, was disappointed by his explanation that, probably, it would not be ready for casting within two years. He intended to model it again, life-size, before he was ready for the heroic. April, the vivifying, had returned; and, as always in the spring, Linda was mainly conscious of the mingled assuaging sounds of life newly admitted through open windows. A single shaded lamp was lighted by a far table, where Arnaud sat cutting the pages of The Living Age with an ivory blade; Dodge was blurred in the semi-obscurity.
He came over to see them more frequently now, through what he called the great moment—so tiresomely extended—of his life. Pleydon came oftener but he said infinitely less. It was his custom to arrive for dinner and suddenly depart early or late in the evening. At times she went up to her room and left the two almost morosely silent men to their own thoughts or pages; at others she complained—no other woman alive would stay with such uninteresting and thoroughly selfish creatures. They never made the pretense of an effort to consider or amuse her. At this Arnaud would put aside his book and begin an absurd social conversation in the manner of Vigné's associates. Pleydon, however, wouldn't speak; nothing broke the somberness of his passionate absorption in invisible tyrannies. She gave up, finally, a persistent effort to lighten his moods. Annoyed she told him that if he did not change he'd be sick, and then where would everything be.