“I have an inclination to regard you as a little mouse,” he said, “but if you bite like that, I shall call you a flea instead. Yes, that value, and the value of money, too, by—hearsay.”
As he talked I had a sense of excitement, a certain uplifting thrill, as it were. It seemed to me he was opening the doors into a world that I had previously merely sensed. I knew dimly of its existence. The girls at Lil’s had said: “Well, what do you want then?” I did not know myself. I think it was simply a blind, intuitive reaching after the light of understanding. I felt these things, but I could not express my needs. I was of the inarticulate, but not the unfeeling. Bonnat must have realized this quality in me, else he would not have revealed himself so freely to me. He talked with an odd mixture of seriousness and lightness. It was almost as if he slowly chose his words, to make himself clear, just as if he were speaking to a child—a child he was not entirely sure of, but whom he wanted to reach.
“I do know what you mean,” I cried. “Do you know Kipling’s ‘L’Envoi?’—because that expresses it exactly.”
And I recited warmly, for I loved it:
“When earth’s last picture is painted
And the tubes are twisted and dry,
When the oldest colors are faded,
And the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it—
Lie down for an æon or two,
Till the Master of all good workmen
Shall set us to work anew.
And those who are good shall be happy;
They shall sit in a Golden Chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas
With brushes of Comet’s hair;
They shall find real saints to draw from—
Magdalene, Peter and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting,
And never be tired at all;
And only the Master shall praise us,
And only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money,
And no one shall work for Fame:
But each for the joy of the working;
And each in his separate star
Shall draw the thing as he sees it
For the God of Things as They are!”
“Bully!” cried Bonnat. “Your dramatic training was not lost. Only one thing—”
“What?”
He put his two hands on my shoulders, and gave me a friendly little shake and hug: