“I think so,” said Dangerfield, setting his lips. “Gives us a better chance at color. But start on this; that will come later.”
When he had returned to the studio, he took out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes, which were wet with repressed emotion. Inga, delighted to see him in this mood, stood smiling.
“It’s the most wonderful take-off,” he said, at last, when he could get breath. “You don’t understand. I have made it a caricature of a superhuman ass I know—Tomlinson—who thinks he can decorate. It’ll be the death of him when it comes out.”
“You had a lot of fun directing them,” she said, glad to find even this expedient to interest him.
The boisterous mood left him.
“Lucky devils,” he said, with the smile still lingering about the corners of his mouth. “Wonder if they know their luck?” An expression of great kindness came to soften his face, as he stood there reflecting, which held her eyes and brought a smile of tenderness to them too. For him, the darkling walls, the strident, contending city no longer existed, the hard barriers of the present rolling away before the rise of remembered scenes—glorious attics and tables set with the appetite of youth.
“Reminds me of the time when we painted socks on Quinny’s legs so that he could go out and call on a countess. What rackets we used to cut up then! And weren’t we sure of the future! Well, that was something—to believe, even for a few years. The young are all geniuses. Why, Inga, I used to walk to the top of Montmartre just to look down over Paris and say to myself, ‘Some day, all that, glittering below there, will know who I am!’” He shook his head, and added in a lower voice: “I used to think, in those days, I was going to be a great man.”
“You are.” She came to the side of the armchair into which he had sunk, and stood with her hand upon his arm.
“What?” he said, startled from his revery by the sound of her voice.