“It is greater to create than to comprehend,” she spoke out, above the tinkle of the old piano, urged by some reproach in her soul. “We are all blind, blind in this weary world, and we are groping for the gods who deny themselves to us. It is great to see beyond, to know the gods even faintly, and to appease the hunger of others. More than that it is man’s great act, the revealing of himself before the Master, his prayer to God who has made him with appetites and passions, and has made him with the longing to see and the power to dream. That has—” She paused, shrinking from completing her thought—“brought me here and made me low.”
She closed the piano, and walked rapidly up and down the room. Suddenly she lit a candle and motioned Erard to follow her into an adjoining lumber-room. He looked about disgustedly at the dusty room, the neglected canvases. In one corner stood an easel, and on it, unframed, his picture of Adela Anthon, which with coarse irony Wilbur had recently sent to her bankers. They looked at the face, Mrs. Wilbur holding the candle above their heads.
“I couldn’t do that now,” Erard admitted, squinting at the picture critically.
“No!” Mrs. Wilbur assented decisively. “And that,” she spoke fiercely, “the power behind that picture mastered me, deluded me—it is sad—defeat—”
A flare of wind blew out the light.
“You are wrong,” Erard checked her calmly, “and foolish. The power is still mine, and—”
He moved as if to touch her. She walked absently past him into the firelight, and placing the candle unlit on the table, sank into a chair.
“Yes, I suppose so,” she answered listlessly, burying her gaze again in the fire.
Erard watched her savouringly, exactly conscious of her beauty and her power. She was to be his in due and proper season. To-night she had stirred his sluggish senses, much as a superb actress might impose herself, at one remove.