"Thank you, I said that about the year 1907," said Quinny, while Steingall gasped and nudged Towsey. "That is the tragedy of life, not the tragedy of art, two very different things. An artist has need of ten, fifteen, twenty women, according to the multiplicity of his ideas. He should be always violently in love or violently reacting."
"And the wife?" said De Gollyer. "Has she any influence?"
"My dear fellow, the greatest. Without a wife, an artist falls a prey to the inspiration of the moment—condemned to it; and as he is not an analyst, he ends by imagining he really is in love. Take portrait-painting. Charming lady sits for portrait, painter takes up his brushes, arranges his palette, seeks inspiration,—what is below the surface?—something intangible to divine, seize, and affix to his canvas. He seeks to know the soul; he seeks how? As a man in love seeks, naturally. The more he imagines himself in love, the more completely does the idea obsess him from morning to night—plain as the nose on your face. Only there are other portraits to paint. Enter the wife."
"Charming," said Stibo, who had not ceased twining his mustaches in his pink fingers.
"Ah, that's the point. What of the wife?" said Steingall, violently.
"The wife—the ideal wife, mind you—is then the weapon, the refuge. To escape from the entanglement of his momentary inspiration, the artist becomes a man: my wife and bonjour. He returns home, takes off the duster of his illusion, cleans the palette of old memories, washes away his vows, protestations, and all that rot, you know, lies down on the sofa, and gives his head to his wife to be rubbed. Curtain. The comedy is over."
"But that's what they don't understand," said Steingall, with enthusiasm. "That's what they will never understand."
"Such miracles exist?" said Towsey with a short, disagreeable laugh.
"I know the wife of an artist," said Quinny, "whom I consider the most remarkable woman I know—who sits and knits and smiles. She is one who understands. Her husband adores her, and he is in love with a woman a month. When he gets in too deep, ready for another inspiration, you know, she calls up the old love on the telephone and asks her to stop annoying her husband."
"Marvelous!" said Steingall, dropping his glasses.