"It can't be worked for the base purposes of earth; but it may be found still undefiled before men's touch has soiled it. So I believe in some hearts, undefiled by the breath of conventionality and cant, may lie the true love of the poets, 'lasting, and knowing not change.'"
"Ah! you're too ideal for me," cried Waldemar, smiling at her impetuous earnestness. "You are all enthusiasm, imagination, effervescence——"
"I am not," she answered, impatiently. "I can be very practical when I like; I made myself the loveliest wreath yesterday; quite as pretty as Bella buys at Mitchell's for five times the sum mine cost me. That was very realistic, wasn't it?"
"No. That exercised your fancy. You wouldn't do—what do you call it?—plain work, with half the gusto; now, would you?"
Valérie made a moue mutine, expressive of entire repudiation of such employment.
"I thought so," laughed Falkenstein. "You idealists are like the fire in the grate yonder; you flame up very hot and bright for a moment, but 'the sparks fly upward and expire,' and if they're not fed with some fresh fuel they soon die out into lifeless cinders."
"On the contrary," said Valérie, quickly, "we are like wood fires, and burn red down to the last ash."
"Mr. Falkenstein, come and look at this little 'Ghirlandaio,'" said Bella, turning round, with an angry light in her eyes; "it is such a gem. Papa bought it the other day."
Waldemar rose reluctantly enough to inspect the "Ghirlandaio," manufactured in a back slum, and smoked into proper antiquity to pigeon, under the attractive title of an "Old Master," the brewer and his species, and found Miss Cashranger's ignorant dilettantism very tame after Valérie's animated arguments and gesticulation. But he was too old a hand at such game not to know how to take advantage of even an enemy's back-handed stroke, and he turned the discussion on art to an inspection of Valérie's portfolio, over whose croquis and pastels, and water-colors, he lingered as long as he could, till the clock reminded him that it was time to walk on into Eaton Square, where he was going to dine at his father's. The governor excepted, Falkenstein had little rapport with his family. His brother was as chilly disagreeable in private life as he was popularly considered irreproachable in public, and as pragmatical and uncharitable as your immaculate individuals ordinarily are. His sisters were cold, conventional women, as utterly incapable of appreciating him as of allowing the odor of his Latakia in their drawing-room, and so it chanced that Waldemar, a favorite in every other house he entered, received but a chill welcome at home. A prophet has no honor in his own country, and the hearth where a man's own kin are seated is too often the one to nurture the cockatrice's eggs of ill-nature and injustice against him. Thank Heaven there are others where the fire burns brighter, and the smiles are fonder for him. It were hard for some of us if we were dependent on the mercies of our "own family."
The old Count gave him this night but a distant welcome, for Maximilian was there to "damn" his brother with "faint praise," and had been pouring into his father's ear tales of "poor Waldemar's losses at play." All that Falkenstein said, his sisters took up, contradicted, and jarred upon, till he, fairly out of patience, lapsed into silence, only broken by a sarcasm deftly flung at Maximillian to floor him completely in his orthodoxy or ethics. He was glad to bid the governor good night; and leaving them to hold a congress over his skepticism, radicalism, and other dangerous opinions, he walked through the streets, and swore slightly, with his pipe between his teeth, as he opened his own door.