Philip, who was conscious of having got a little heated, and who was anxious to make amends, volunteered to walk as far as Ore with Dan.
But as they walked the old topic still occupied them.
“You have had a lot to say in your capacity of novelist, Philip,” said Dan. “You hold that you see through a character because of your story-telling gift. As a matter of fact, you don’t get outside yourself enough to be able to form a just estimate of character. Now I, as a painter of portraits, am a bit of a character reader. A really great portrait-painter puts a man’s naked soul upon the canvas. Such portraits are a revelation of the kind one expects on the Judgment Day.”
“Oh, I know all about that,” answered Philip testily. (Most people wasted their time, and his, by telling him things he knew all about.)
“But let me finish,” persisted Dan. “You, with a novelist’s insight, say that you believe Miss Le Breton incapable of joy. Now I, with my painter’s insight, should say that Miss Le Breton has known both great joy and great sorrow. There is in her face the sweetness that renunciation alone gives. Ah! when I get my chance, I will put on canvas what I see in that woman’s face!”
“Exactly,” said Philip bitingly; “what you see, but not necessarily what is there. The accident of beauty makes Miss Le Breton’s face what it is. Think, man! that girl until quite recently was not quite sane. The form the disease took in her was that of an undeveloped brain (so I have always understood). This means that the girl has had no history; therefore, what you say you see in her face cannot be there.”
Dan smiled. “But I see it,” he answered.
“Well, Dan, I am an egotistical aggravating fellow, and I daresay you have more insight than I have. I am really a good deal puzzled about Aimée Le Breton. She talked like a woman who had both education and intellect to-day. I wonder if her mother’s melancholy preyed upon her, and reflected itself in a curious way, so as to mislead people in her earlier days? You know—or perhaps you don’t know—that in the prairie doctors’ opinions are but rarely asked or obtained. It may be that in new and better surroundings the girl has awakened to her real self. But here we are at Ore, so good-bye, and don’t go away with hard thoughts of me for my disagreeable didacticism. I am a disagreeable beast, but I love you well!”
Dan wrung his friend’s hand as he said whimsically: “I think, old man, I’ll set about getting the beam out of my own eye!”
It was Phyllis Lane who greeted Dan when he reached Hawk’s Nest.