“Not an iota of power lost, is there?” She was hardly surprised on turning to find Erard in their old rendezvous.
“I saw you come in here from the Long Gallery,” he explained, “and I made a wager with myself that you were looking for this Holbein.”
“Yes,” she blushed in spite of herself. “I have seen certain pictures all these years, just as they hung on the walls, frames and all. But they have rehung so many of them, that I miss some old friends.”
“Oh, yes, the directors set the fashion in pictures. They have an attic full of canvases up stairs, and every now and then, when the fancy takes them, they whisk an old friend off the walls and replace him with some piece of rubbish they have discovered. Of course the big ones stay, like this fellow, only they have to walk about from room to room.”
Then they were silent, each at a loss how to take up the conversation. Erard had met her as if it were the most natural thing in the world to find her here. At last he said brusquely,—“So you found your way back again.”
“Yes,” she replied weakly, wondering what he knew of the intermediate processes; what gossip he had heard. His next remark was made as much to the portrait before them, into which he suddenly plunged his face, as to herself.
“You concluded that we are right,—we who care solely for sensations and ideas.”
Mrs. Wilbur felt chill at this summary of her emotions. “Ah, well,” he continued, using his glasses on the ruff of the Holbein man, “it was just as well to make the experiment, even if it wasted four years. Having satisfied yourself that the duties and privileges of normal society don’t amuse you, you will never be bothered again. You’ve got that behind you.”
The woman in Mrs. Wilbur suddenly realized how actually she was cut off from the “duties and privileges of normal society,” and was not altogether so complacent in the thought as Erard assumed. “I am not planning a future,” she replied with an attempt at lightness. Erard turned from the picture and looked at her deliberately, as if to say, “You are in my hands now, my lady.” His manner was placid; he was enjoying the pleasure of a successful solution to an intricate problem. He repeated the resulting proposition again with greater emphasis for her benefit.
“I mean that if you could content yourself with mere activity, with bringing children into the world, and conducting charities and clubs, it would be foolish to attempt anything else. But having tried,—”