A point of fear came into Madame St. Leger's eyes. Outward serenity, inward assurance, were not easy of maintenance. The more so, that again she was very sensible of the unseen crowd of ignoble forms and conceptions peopling the room, tainting and exhausting the air of it, pressing upon and—as she felt—deriding her.
"You speak foolishly and extravagantly," she said, steadying her voice with effort. "I pardon that because I know that you are suffering and not altogether master of yourself. But I do not enjoy this conversation. I beg you to talk more becomingly, or I shall be unable to remain. I shall feel compelled to leave you."
For an instant René Dax looked up at her with a positively diabolic expression of resentment. Then his face was distorted by a sudden spasm.
"It is only too true that I suffer," he cried bitterly. "My head aches—there at the base of my brain. It is like the grinding of iron knuckles. I become distracted. Very probably I speak extravagantly. My sensations are extravagant, and my talk matches them. But do not leave me. I will not offend you. I will be altogether good, altogether mild and amiable. Only remain. Place yourself here in this chair. Your presence comforts and pacifies me—but only if you are in sympathy with me. Let your sympathy flow out then. Do not restrain it. Let it surround and support me, buoying me up, so that I float upon the surface of it as upon some divine river of peace. Ah, Madame, pity me. I am so tired of pain."
Reluctantly, out of her charity and against her better, her mundane judgment, Gabrielle St. Leger yielded. She sat down in the large, black brocade-covered chair indicated. Her back was toward the drawing upon the easel. She was glad not to see it, glad that the electric light no longer glared in her eyes. She clasped her hands lightly in her lap, trying to subdue all inward agitation, to maintain a perfectly sane and normal outlook, thereby infusing something of her own health and sweetness as a disinfectant into this morbid atmosphere.
The young man sat down, too, upon the edge of the divan just opposite to her. He set his elbows upon his knees, his big head projected forward, his eyes closed, his chin resting in the hollow of his hard, clever little hands. For a time there was silence, save for the dripping of the fountain in the glass tank, and the ticking of a clock. Presently, very softly, he began to speak.
"My art is killing me—killing me—and only you and Mademoiselle Bette can save me," he said. "And I am worth saving; for, not only am I the most accomplished draftsman of the century, but my knowledge of the human animal is unsurpassed. Moreover, that I should die is so inconceivably purposeless. Death is such a stupidity, such an outrage on intelligence and common-sense."
Gabrielle remained passive. To reason with him would, she felt, be useless as yet. She would wait her opportunity.
"Yes, my art is killing me," he went on. "It asks too much. More than once I have tried to sever myself from it; but it is the stronger. It refuses amputation. Long ago, when, as a child—unhappy, devoured by fancies, by curiosity about myself, about other children, about everything which I saw—I found that I possessed this talent, I was both shy and enchanted. It gave me power. Everything that I looked at belonged to me. I could reproduce it in beauty or the reverse. I could cover with ridicule those who annoyed me. By means of my talent I could torment. I played with it as naughty little boys play together, ingenious in provocation, in malice, in dirty monkey tricks. Then as I grew older I enjoyed my talent languorously. I spent long days of dreams, long nights of love with it. That was a period when my heart was still soft. I believed. The trivial vices of the little boy were left behind. The full-blooded vices of manhood were untried as yet. Later ambition took me. I would study. I would know. I would train my eye and my hand to perfect mastery in observation and in execution. My own mechanical skill, my power of memorizing, of visualizing, intoxicated me. I reviewed the work of famous draftsmen. I recognized that I was on the highroad to surpass it, both in effrontery of conception and perfection of technique. I refused my art nothing, shrank from nothing. I had loved my art as a companion in childish mischief; then as a youth loves his first mistress. Now I loved it as a man loves his career, loves that which raises him above his contemporaries. I stood above others, alone. I was filled with an immense scorn of them. I unveiled their deceit, their hypocrisy, their ignorance, their vileness, the degradation of their minds and habits. I whipped them till the blood came. No one could escape. I jeered. I laughed. I made them laugh too. Between the cuts of the lash, even while the blood flowed, they laughed. How could they help doing so? My wit was irresistible. They cursed me, yet shouted to me to lay on to them again."
For a minute or more silence, save for the dripping fountain, the ticking clock, and a bubbling, sucking sound as one of the black-and-orange blotched newts dived from the rockwork down to the sandy, pebbly floor of the glass tank. Madame St. Leger leaned back in her chair. She pressed her handkerchief against her lips. She felt as one who witnesses some terrible drama upon the stage which holds the attention captive. She could not have gone away and left René Dax until the scene was concluded, even if she would.