Beholding all which, poor Adrian's spirits descended with most disintegrating velocity into his boots, and miserably camped at that abject level. For though he might declare, and very honestly believe, the idea in question, the movement in question, to be so much moonshine, and the Spirit of the Age a rank impostor, how did he propose to convince Madame St. Leger of that? The inquiry brought him up as against a brick wall. Yes, Miss Beauchamp had been rather cruelly right when she told him his work was cut out for him and would prove a mighty tough job. For what, calmly considered, had he, after all, to offer as against those alluring and immense perspectives?—Really, when he came to ask himself, it made him blush.—Only an agreeable, fairly talented and well-conditioned young man—that was all; and marriage—marriage, an old story to Gabrielle, a commonplace affair about which she already knew everything that there is to know. Of course she didn't know everything about it, he went on, plucking up a little spirit again. Hers had been a marriage of convenience; a marriage of reason. Poor Horace was by a whole generation her senior. Whereas, in the present case, it all would be so different—a great and exclusive passion, et cetera, et cetera. He would have liked to wax eloquent, descanting upon that difference and its resultant illuminating values. But his eloquence stuck in his throat somehow. Himself as a husband—humor compelled him to own, with a pretty sharp stab of mortification, this a rather stale and meager programme as alternative to cloudy splendors of self-consecration to the mighty purposes of Modernity and the Spirit of the Age.
"She is very beautiful, is she not, my Madonna of the Future?"
René Dax asked the question in soft, confidential accents. He stood at Adrian's elbow, clothed in a scarlet Japanese silk smoking-suit. Upon his neat bare feet he wore a pair of black Afghan sandals. Uttering little loving, crooning cries, the gray lemur balanced itself upon his shoulders, clasping his great domed head with thin furry arms and furry-backed, black-palmed hands, the finger-tips of which just met upon the center of his forehead.
"I have been watching, from behind the screen, the effect she produced on you. I have given up going to bed, you see. I wrap myself in blankets and quilts and sleep here—when I do sleep—upon one of the divans. It is more artistic. It is simpler. The bed, when you come to consider it, is, like the umbrella, the mark of the bourgeois, of the bourgeoise and of all their infected progeny. It represents, as you may say, the battle-cry of middle-class civilization. The domestic hearth? No, no. The domestic bed. How far more scientific and philosophic a definition! Therefore I abjure it.—So I was lying there on the divan in meditation. I am preparing illustrations for an édition de luxe of Les Contes Drolatiques. It is not designed for family reading. It will probably be printed in Belgium and sold at Port Said. I lie on my back. I cover my face, thus isolating myself from contemplation of surrounding objects, so that my imagination may play freely around those agreeable tales. In the midst of my meditation I heard you burst in. At first I felt annoyed. Then I arose silently and watched the effect this portrait produced on you. I was rewarded; for it knocked the bluster pretty effectually out of you, eh, mon vieux? I saw you droop, grow dejected, pull your beard, wipe your eyes, eh? And you deserved all that, for your manner was offensive this afternoon. You treated me disrespectfully. Have you now come to apologize? It would be only decent you should do so. But I do not press the point. I can afford to be magnanimous, since, in any case, I am even with you. My Madonna is my revenge."
"I did not come to apologize, but to demand explanation," Adrian began, hotly. Then his tone changed. Truly he was very unhappy, very heavy of heart. "You are right," he added. "This drawing is your revenge."
"You do not like my drawing."
"On the contrary, I find it glorious, wonderful."
"And it hurts you?"
"Yes, it hurts me," he answered hoarsely, backing away. "I hate it."
"I am so glad," René said, sweetly. He put his hand behind his scarlet back, and tweaked the tip of the lemur's long furry tail affectionately.