“Sunday: prepare sketch for the Trenton fountain. Evening, Purzes for dinner. Tuesday: ask Mr. Bailey about Philadelphia. Friday: Jack and Clara to tea.”
She filled ten days with her mental notes of engagements. When she had done so much, suddenly she grasped the book in her two hands as if to tear it. Her hands stopped in suspense. Her face turned upward.
“It has to be,” she said, once more aloud. “It is a lie.... What is a lie?” She was smiling. “Cornelia——” she tenderly spoke, almost maternally to herself, “when one does a thing, do it well.”
She laid the date-book open at the center of the desk.
With a swift thrust she opened the drawers. She closed them. No. There was nothing there to be concealed.
She was up. She smiled; once more she took a pencil and turned the pages of the book to a day two weeks away. She wrote:
“Ask David to dinner.”
Then, she straightened and crossed the room.
A batch of painted sheets were in her arms. Her water-colors, her incomprehensible confessions. She laid them forth on the table, looked long at them. They were very lovely, these delirious designs, these flauntings of form and color. Color rose in them to form, form faded and died away to the realms of color. But she looked at them and shook her head. They meant nothing to her.
“What nonsense,” she breathed.