Bonnat said that a man should show in his work the human mood, and that a picture should mean something more than a pretty melody of colors. Menna interrupted him with:
“What’s the use, as long as we get good Pilsener beer?”
Paul laughed at that, and called to a waiter to bring some more Pilsener for Menna right away. After the dinner was over, Mr. Menna took Miss Fleming home, and Paul and I walked up Fourteenth Street, stopping to look in the windows, and to glance at the curious people in the throngs that passed us. Fourteenth Street was then a very gay and bedizened place at night.
When we reached my door, Paul, who had been very silent, took my hand and held it for some time, without saying a word. I could feel his eyes looking down on me in the darkness of the street, and somehow the very clasp of his hand seemed to be speaking to me, telling me things that made me feel warm, and, oh! so happy. When he did speak at last, his big voice was curiously repressed, and he said huskily:
“I think I know now why some men give up art for the sake of protecting their own!” He said “own” with such strange emphasis, pressing my hand as he said it, that I felt too moved to answer him, and I had a great longing to put my arms around him and draw his head down to mine.
After that night Mr. Menna did not seem the same to me. All the little kindnesses I had been accustomed to receive from him, such as cleaning my palette, my brushes, and nailing my canvases on the stretchers, he now let me do myself, and once when I asked him to varnish a painting of mine, he answered:
“Why don’t you get that Bonnat to do it for you?”
XLVIII
“Dear Marion:
Mr. Hirsh is going to put on the living pictures in Providence for two weeks, and he says he would like to take the same girls that he had before, and told me to tell you that he will pay twenty dollars a week. Also that he will take us to Boston and some other places if we do well in Providence.