He stood for things: she had watched his evolution from the clay sketch, and in Pleydon's mind, to the final heroic proportions; and she had taken for granted that a grateful world would see him in her light. A woman, she decided, had made the trouble; and she hated her with a personal vigor. Pleydon said:
“I told you that old Simon was unbalanced; now you can see it by his reception in a successful city. The sculptor—do you remember him, a Beaux-Arts graduate?—admits that he had always opposed it, but that political motives overbore his pure protest. There is a scheme now to build a pavilion, for babies, and shut out the monument from open view. They may do that but time will sweep away their walls. If I had modeled Simon Downige, yes, he would go; but I modeled his vision, his aspiration—the hope of all men for release and purity.
“Downige and the individual babies are unimportant compared to a vision of perfection, of escape. As long as men live, if they live, they'll reach up; and that gesture in itself is heaven. Not accomplishment. The spirit dragging the flesh higher; but spirit alone—empty balloons. A dream in bronze, harder even than men's heads, more durable than their prejudices, so permanent that it will wear out their ignorance; and in the end—always in the end—they'll bring their wreath.
“A replica has gone to Cottarsport, from me; and you ought to see it there, on a block of New England granite. It's in the Common, a windswept reach with low houses and a white steeple and the sea. It might have been there from the beginning, rising on rock against the pale salt day. They can go to hell in Hesperia.”
Still Linda's hurt persisted; she saw the unfortunate occurrence as a direct blow at her pride. Arnaud, too, failed her; he was splendid in his assault upon such rapacious stupidity; but it was only an impersonal concern. His manner expressed the conviction that it might have been expected. He was blind to her special enthusiasm, her long intimate connection with the statue. Exasperated she almost told him that it was more real to her than their house, than Vigné and Lowrie, than he. She was stopped, fortunately, by the perception that, amazingly, the statue was more actual than Dodge Pleydon. It touched the center of her life more nearly.
Why, she didn't know.
If her mental confusion increased by as much as a feeling, Linda thought, she would be close to madness. It was unbearable at practically forty.
Lowrie said, at the worst possible moment, that he found the entire episode ridiculously overemphasized. A statue more or less was of small importance. If the Downige family were upset why didn't they employ an able lawyer to dispose of it? There were many ways for such a proceeding—
“I have no desire to hear them,” she interrupted. “You seem to know a tremendous lot, but what good it will do you in the end who can say! And, with all your cleverness, you haven't an ounce of appreciation for art. Besides, I hate to see any one as young as you so sure of himself. Often I suspect you are patronizing your father and me. It's not pretty nor polite.”
Lowrie was obviously embarrassed by her attack, and managed the abrupt semblance of an apology. Arnaud, who had put down his eternal book, said nothing until the boy had vanished. “Wasn't that rather sharp?” he asked mildly. “Perhaps,” she replied in a tone without warmth or regret. “Somehow I am never comfortable with Lowrie.”