He cared nothing for women; he had really never cared for any woman excepting only this one. He would never marry and have a son. He had no near or distant relatives. For whose sake, then, was he standing here in workman's overalls? What business had he here in the basement of a shabby house in midsummer? Did there remain any vague hope of Strelsa? Perhaps. Hope is the last of one's friends to die. Or was it for himself that he was working now to provide against those evil days "when the keepers of the house shall tremble"? Perhaps he was unconsciously obeying nature's first law.
And yet, slowly within him grew a certainty that these reasons were not the real ones—not the vital impulse that moved his hand steadily through critical and delicate moments as he bent, breathless, over the faded splendours of ancient canvases. No; somehow or other he had already begun to work for the sake of the work itself—whatever that really meant. That was the basic impulse—the occult motive; and, somehow he knew that, once aroused, the desire to strive could never again in him remain wholly quiescent.
Both Dankmere and Miss Vining had gone to lunch, presumably in different directions; Daisy and her youngsters, having been nourished, were asleep; there was not a sound in the house except the soft rubbing of tissue-paper where Quarren was lightly removing the retouching varnish from a relined canvas. Presently the front door-bell rang.
Quarren rinsed his hands and, still wearing overalls and painter's blouse, mounted the basement stairs and opened the front door. And Mrs. Sprowl supported by a footman waddled in, panting.
"Tell your master I want to see him," she said—"I don't mean that fool of an Englishman; I mean Mr. Quar—Good Lord! Ricky, is that you? Here, get me a chair—those front steps nearly killed me. Long ago I swore I'd never enter a house which was not basement-built and had an elevator!... Hand me one of those fans. And if there's any water in the house not swarming with typhoid germs, get me a glass of it."
He brought her a tumbler of spring water; she panted and gulped and fanned and panted, her little green eyes roaming around her.
Presently she dismissed the footman, and turned her heavily flushed face on Quarren. The rolls of fat crowded the lace on her neck, perspiration glistened under her sparklike eyes.
"How are you?" she inquired.
He said, smilingly, that he was well.