Fred recognizes the blue eyes and glowing face, as they go past the window. It is only Sister Minnie. Not coming here, after all! No. And the clouds could not overcome and hide the blue sky. It shone out serenely and hopefully, like Minnie's own encouraging spirit. She breasts the storm gallantly. If she can only get round the corner into C— Street! But here all the tempest seems collected to battle with her—She wraps herself a little closer, and holds her breath. A few steps more,—she turns round,—places her back full at the driving storm,—and draws a long breath. Now for it! The flakes stop suddenly, as if awed by the quiet determination in the young face. They fall to the ground, stilly. The blue sky looks out, the sun shimmers white for five minutes. Minnie walks rapidly, runs up the steps,—rings, and takes into the house with her a full, fresh life, that vibrates from cellar to attic in harmonious energy.
The afternoon wanes. Fred has dined. He takes his meerschaum from the teapoy by his side and examines it critically. How for the color? Is it just the right shade to stop? No. A very little darker. This is growing quite beautiful. Almost like an agate. Which of those six is the prettiest, after all? He thinks a seventh, which he remembers lying on Little's mantel-piece, outdoes the whole. That of Little's was not carved, nor silver-mounted even, and yet connoisseurs pronounced it worth a hundred and fifty dollars. Not one of these is worth ten. He smokes again, and looks at the cannel coal as it leaps into flame. The room is very still; not a footfall can be heard in the house;—partly because the doors are hung with a view to silence and the floors thickly carpeted, and partly because there are only two servants in-doors, and those men. The cook cannot speak English, and Fred's own man, a jewel in his way, is taciturn to a fault. If Fred would be honest with himself, he would acknowledge that the third-hand chatter of anybody's kitchen would often be a delightful relief to his solitude. But then how could he follow up his system of self-culture? That and society are quite incompatible things. However, he yawns fearfully.
But what then? Has the man no mind, no cultivation, no taste? Things do not indicate any such want. The walls of the room in which he is just now lounging have their crimson and gold almost covered with pictures,—copies of rare Murillos and Raphaels, and an original head of a boy, by Greuze, with the lips as fresh as they were a hundred years ago. An exquisite "Dying Stork," in bronze, stands on a bracket below Sassoferrato's sweetest Madonna, and Retzsch's "Hamlet" lies open on a side-table. The three Canovian Graces stand in a corner opposite him, and he glances at the pedestal which stands ready to receive "Eve at the Fountain." The pedestal has been there two weeks already, waiting for the "Oxford" to arrive with its many precious Art-burdens. It stands near the window; it will be a good light for it. Fred wishes, for the hundredth time, that it would come along. There are books, surely? Oh, yes, one side of the room is a complete bookcase,—tasteful, inside and out.
The small room which opens into this luxurious sitting-room has a high north window, and near it stands Fred's easel, with a half-finished head on a canvas. Already it has changed its aspect twenty times. Sometimes it is a Nymph, sometimes a Naiad, sometimes Undine. Once, he dashed all the green of the wood-nymph's forest, with one stroke, into green water, intending to put in Undine, with a boat. He has not fulfilled his intention; but he works on, with the luxurious abandonment of genius to its spell, be it what it may. He does not care what it ends in. One of Fred's theories is, that the imagination, by constant and intense exercise, may so project the image it conceives, as to make it the subject of ocular contemplation and imitation. Why not? All objects of sight are painted on a flat surface, and it is by experience, comparison, nay, in some measure by the will, that we get our ideas of their shape and distance. Poor Blake's insane painting of imaginary heads, which he saw three or six feet from him, was the only true and rational method of painting at all. Think of your thought,—intensify it,—create it,—create it perfectly,—define it carefully,—group it gracefully, —color it exquisitely,—project it, by an intense effort of the will, into the space before you. There it stands. Now paint it.
He is fond of dwelling on this theory; and as nobody takes the trouble to contradict him, he has come to believe it truth, through hearing it often repeated. He has explained it to Minnie more than twenty times, and says he is almost ready to paint. Not quite. He must lie on the sofa a year, perhaps two years longer, before he will be able to satisfy himself. But then, what is a year, two, ten years, in an eternity of fame?
The conception being completely projected from the brain in a visible form, what remains but the mechanical imitation of it? Anybody can do that. The thing is the conception. In vain Minnie suggests the vulgar notion of acquiring facility by drawing and copying things in general.
"Entirely unnecessary, Minnie. What! is not genius before rules? Why should I imitate Titian's tints, when I can copy my own fancies? When I get my ideal perfected, you will soon see it real. I can copy it in half an hour. If it is in me, it will come out of me, like Curran's eloquence."
"But," says Minnie, doubtfully, looking at the easel where the golden curls and heavenly eyes of an angel are obscured by the russet-brown of a beginning wood-nymph, "why don't you keep to one idea, Fred?"
"Oh, because I choose to be fancy-free. I will not have my imagination trammelled. Let it wander at its own sweet will. You will see, Minnie, by-and-by. Now, here I have been getting up a head,—not painting it, you know. Sometimes I can almost see the eyes. But they elude me,—I haven't quite command of them yet. But I shall get it,—I shall get it yet!"
Minnie remembers the same things said to her ever since she was a child. Fred used to tell it all over to her then. He was so much older than she was,—fourteen years,—that she was quite flattered by being thought worthy to listen to his theories of all sorts. However, since she had come to think for herself, one by one all these theories had faded out of her mind and seemed like last year's clouds. She had discovered that it was useless to controvert them, and generally listened with some pretence of patience. The last time she had said, at the first pause,—