"Hang it all! I'm going, Tony. There are two pair of boots, anyhow. I haven't been to a play," he laughed excitedly, "since I was a child. Hustle, Tony, we will toss up for the best suit of clothes."
The drama of Dumas gave Antony a beautiful escape from reality. La Dame aux Camélias disenchanted him from his own problems for the time. In the Count's box he sat in the background and fed his eyes and his ears with the romantic and ardent art of the Second Empire. He found the piece great, mobile, and palpitating, and he was not ashamed. The divine Sarah and Marguerite Gautier died before his eyes, and out of the ashes womanhood arose and called to him, as the Venus de Milo had called to him down the long gallery, and distractions he had known seemed soulless and unreal shapes. He worshipped Dumas in his creation.
"Rainsford," whispered Potowski, laying his hand on Antony's knee, "what do you t'ink, my friend?" The tears were raining down his mobile face; he sighed. "Arrt," he said in his mellow whisper, "is only the expression of the feeling, the beautiful expression of the feeling. That is the meaning of all arrt."
The big red curtain fell slowly and the three men, poet, singer and sculptor, kept their seats as though still under the spell of Dumas and unable to break it.
"Tony," said Dearborn, as they went out together, "I am going to burn up all four acts."
CHAPTER XV
The middle of January arrived, and he thought Cedersholm would have come by that time and supposed that they would be off for Rome.
The study of his mother was accepted by the jury for the exhibition in the Rue de Sèvres, and Fairfax went on the opening day, saw his name in the catalogue, and his study on the red pedestal made a dark mellow note amongst the marbles. He stood with the crowd and listened with beating heart to the comments of the public. He watched the long-haired Bohemians and the worldly people, the Philistine and the élite as they surged, a little sea of criticism, approval, praise and blame, through the rooms.