"A visit to the galleries is tempting," she said. "It may give me an idea…. I never had quite such a patron. You are so little curious to see what I have done, that I sometimes wonder why you wanted the portrait, and why you came to me for it…. I wonder if it's the day or my eyes—it's so much easier to talk aimlessly than to work——"
"It's really gray, and the sparrows have decided upon a shower."
She regarded him whimsically.
"And you look so well in your raincoat," he added.
They took the 'bus up the Avenue…. She pointed out the tremendous vitalities of the Rodin marbles, intimated their visions, and remarked that he should hear Vina Nettleton on this subject.
"She breaks down, becomes livid, at the stupidity of the world, for reviling her idol on his later work, especially the bust of Balzac, which the critics said showed deterioration," Beth told him, "As if Rodin did not know the mystic Balzac better than the populace."
"It has always seemed that the mystics of the arts must recognize one another," Bedient said…. "I do not know Balzac——"
"You must. Why, even Taine, Sainte Beuve, and Gautier didn't know him! They glorified his work just so long as it had to do with fleshly Paris, but called him mad in his loftier altitudes where they couldn't follow."
It was possibly an hour afterward, when Bedient halted before a certain picture longer than others; then went back to another that had interested him. Moments passed. He seemed to have forgotten all exteriors, but vibrated at intervals from one to another of these—two small silent things—Le Chant du Berger and another. They were designated only by catalogue numbers. Beth, who knew them, would have waited hours…. Presently he spoke, and told her long of their effects, what they meant to him.
"You have not been here before?" she asked.