Adela Anthon’s curiosity to see Erard was gratified finally at a little “gathering” in his rooms. She had gone with Mrs. Ormiston Dexter and Molly Parker and had met Mrs. Warmister and the heavy Mr. Salters. They had praised Erard’s sketches until the sallow little man gave the word to halt. While the others were drinking chocolate and listening to Salters, Miss Anthon went back to the bare studio with Erard.
His deferential attitude had piqued and irritated her. Couldn’t he forget that she was his benefactress, see her merely as a woman and an attractive one? Even when she had him to herself his talk annoyed her. He expressed enthusiasm over her friend.
“It is marvellous how that Miss Parker, so untrained and unacquainted with even the a b c’s of Art, should feel delicately and get hold instinctively of the right things to feel about. It puts us all to shame! She is a delicious companion, like a translucent lake in the heart of the mountains which reflects every passing image.”
Miss Anthon looked at him ironically.
“Or, in other words, a kind of jelly that shakes when you poke it.”
“Well, the great thing,” Erard retorted, “is to have your sensorium delicate, impressionable,—educate it to be so, if you aren’t like that young girl. How I should like to have her about always, to test impressions for me! I could put her before a picture or a piece of music, and—”
“Register the gush!” Miss Anthon mocked. “Tell me something more about Salters,” she wrenched the conversation away from her friend. “He talks like a bundle of extracts from all the books you ought to have read.”
“He’s a stupid, rich young man. He steals all his ideas from me and mangles them too.”
“He told me he was writing a book.”
“Perhaps so! It takes only paper and ink to make a book.”