They came to the first impressionistic water colors of the summer, rapid notes of vagrant flitting moods of nature seized in unconscious rapture of the moment. De Gollyer was plainly puzzled.
“It’s the same and yet not the same,” he said, staring at them. “It’s more personal. Beautiful, brilliant,—you waste nothing; right to the mark; you’re after the essential thing and you’ve got it, but it’s personal. It’s your mood. Mind you, I don’t say they’re not astonishing; they are. Don’t know any one else who could have done it just the same way. We must exhibit them all together—a riot of sensations. By Jove, yes, sensations, that’s just the word,” he said, delighted to have found the exact term. “But we’re looking for bigger things, Dan—le coup d’œil, the big vision. Um-um, very fine, very fine, bewildering but sensations. My boy, they’re your moods. If I must pass a criticism, pass a very captious criticism, you were too much in love, that’s it, too much in love. Mrs. Dangerfield, as a man of the world I am altogether charming; as a critic I am merciless. Dan was too much in love with you when he did these. A captious criticism, a very captious criticism—but go on, go on—I feel something coming.”
De Gollyer’s remarks spread a certain embarrassment which he was too keen not to notice and too clever to seem to observe. Inga sat down, clasping her hands over her knee, staring at the speaker with a sudden alarmed perception that beneath the apparent lightness of his phrases, there was a man who saw with a clarity which left her with a sudden sense of impending danger. Dangerfield, to cover his confusion, for he himself recognized instantly the subtlety of his friend’s criticism, hastened across the studio to return with a new batch, the record of their sojourn along the broken coasts of the sea. Then he stepped back, moved over to the chair where Inga sat staring ahead and laid his hand on her shoulder with a premonition of what must lie in her mind before this inspection of De Gollyer’s which divined those things beneath the surface of the paint—which they themselves had never faced in complete honesty to themselves.
When De Gollyer had reached that period which had been the crisis of Dangerfield’s internal conflict, those weeks in which he had won a final dispassionate independence, the little man sprang forward eagerly as a falcon sighting its prey.
“At last! I knew it, my boy, I knew it,” he cried in a fever of excitement. “I’ve hunches—prophetic hunches and I knew this was coming. I knew it from the moment you showed me that first sketch. My boy, this is it! By Jove, this is fine! You’ve gone far, you’ve gone beyond yourself. By Jove, this is a smasher!” He turned and held out his hand, aglow with enthusiasm. “Dan, your hand; criticism ends here, you amaze me. I didn’t think you could do it. By Jove, no, I didn’t!”
Inga forgot all her alarmed resentment at one sight of Dangerfield’s face.
“It is good,” said Dangerfield reverently, staring beyond the canvas.
“Let’s go on, let’s go on,” said De Gollyer, impatiently.
As canvas succeeded canvas his amazement and delight increased. When they came to the record of the winter; to those clear, powerful revelations of the hidden treasures of the great metropolis which later furnished New York with the artistic sensation of years, De Gollyer suddenly sat down as though weakened under the powerful stress of discovery, absorbed in a mood of complete silence which might have deceived any one but the friend who knew the value of this rare tribute of profound amazement. At the end, instead of a new outburst of enthusiasm which Inga had expected, he got up, walked over to the table, picked up a cigarette absent-mindedly and went to the window, looking out without bothering himself to phrase a compliment. She felt a sudden sinking of the heart, a brief transitory emotion which took flight on the instant that Dangerfield turned towards her with a glow in his eyes such as she had never seen. She went to him, raised his hand to her lips, turned aside to hide a sudden rush of tears to her eyes, and feeling the need of the two friends to be alone in their emotion, nodded and went out.
When De Gollyer turned at last and came back down the room, Dangerfield, catching his eye, said quietly: