“You have given up painting!” Mrs. Wilbur exclaimed irrelevantly. “I am so sorry for that. Doing, even feeble doing, seems to me so much more real than all this criticism.”
“On the contrary,” Erard remarked, “the critic is the comprehensive, the understanding, the sensuous soul. The desire to ‘do,’ as you call it, is an egotistical conceit, and generally a desire for notoriety.”
“Perhaps in part,” Mrs. Wilbur admitted, thinking momentarily of her husband.
“The one thing in life is to enjoy.” Erard watched her closely to observe how she would take this frank hedonism.
“No, not that,” she protested. “I cannot accept your view.”
“Make all the pretty phrases about it you can,”—Erard shrugged his shoulders,—“it comes to that. You know it.”
Mrs. Wilbur shook her head. “Then we are beasts!”
“Superior beasts, yes.”
The carriage drew up at the door of the great house. In the dazzling atmosphere of this June day the stone seemed whiter, harder than ever. It had taken on very little stain or age.
“I have brought you a mile beyond your destination. The man will drive you back.”