She was leaning on her folded arms, her short coat thrown open negligently, her hat laid aside. Her black eyes gleamed with the intense interest of her appeal. Erard measured her face before he replied. Her hair waved back over her head in thick, rich brown masses. The upper part of the face was thin, mobile, but he noticed for the first time that the chin and jaw over-balanced the other features.
“Why are you anxious to get more than the phrases? to talk ‘art’ fluently when you are over there?”—he pointed vaguely across the boulevard. “You can do that now pretty well. When you are married, and have your palace in St. Louis or Chicago, you can pay ten times what it’s worth for the truck you buy of us. You can become the patroness.”
Miss Anthon drew back, hurt, vexed at her childish confidence. “At least I shall know what to look for in those I patronize. And I am not as simple as you seem to think.”
The sting pleased Erard. “You have come into the procession too late to do anything,” he continued more seriously. “You should have begun with your parents and your grandparents; they became unfortunately prosperous and lived where their senses were dulled.”
“Can I not make up for them?”
“Only in part. We Americans like to think, as your friend Wilbur does, that we can get anything on earth we want. Europe is our Sphinx; we never penetrate the riddle. While we are making toys, up springs some offspring of these ‘effete’ nations and accomplishes like a giant.”
“Some American women do succeed. There is Mrs. Ralston Brown,” Miss Anthon retorted defiantly. She had gone to the master for confession, and he dealt her out sneers. “And why were the salons last spring full of foreign work? Why do the French critics howl for protection for French artists?”
“Do you want to paint jaunty, slap-dash portraits like Mrs. Brown’s ‘A Poet’? Because if you do, I will promise you a picture in the Champ de Mars in five years.”
The bewildered expression settled down on her face again. Mrs. Ralston Brown was an instance of feminine ability of which she was proud.
“No, no,” Erard continued, sipping at his tea. “Don’t believe the journalists of life. Really we Americans have done nothing but journalism in the arts. Certainly many of the ‘smart’ things in the salons this season, every season, are signed with American names.”