In the sounding labour-house vast
Of being, it practised that strength,
Zealous, beneficent, firm!”
THE GOSPEL OF FREEDOM
PART I
CHAPTER I
Simeon Erard tiptoed deftly across the room, tugging at his thin, sandy heard. Fumbling among the curtains which draped one corner of the best light, he pulled the cord, after carefully eyeing his visitors to see that all were placed properly. The light silk folds fell apart, revealing a small canvas,—a cool deep slit of grey water let into a marble floor, which was cut in two by the languorous reach of a woman’s back done in hard green. The large masses of auburn hair of the bent head floated on the creamy slab. The artist coughed.
“Well!” exclaimed Mrs. Anthon, in a puff of surprise. “A bath-room, I declare!”
“Is that your exhibition-picture?” inquired her brother-in-law, Sebastian Anthon, a little dubiously. Erard took no notice of these wavering remarks. To him they were the necessary comment of the world, to which he habitually paid as marked disrespect as he dared.
“You see, don’t you, Miss Anthon,” his voice was persuasively patronizing, “what I have tried to do? You grasp the difficulties, don’t you? Of course to the crowd it’s nothing but a modern bath, half full of water, with a young woman in it, whose hair is red. But you see the vigor of that leg, the coolness of that water shot with light. You feel it. The artist—and the rare person—will stop before that picture; he will know what it means. And the artist paints for the artist; shouldn’t he, Miss Anthon?”