“You see what they are doing,” she said. “There is a new race of artists in Russia. They have passed the emotions—-”
“This poem was due in the world,” Peter said. “But it is still an age ahead of the crowd.”
“That's what makes it so hard for them—for him. He does not like that. He would like to talk to all men straight. Moritz Abel—the name will not be forgotten. He is like the others of the new race. They are terrible in their calm. They have passed the emotions. They are free. Other artists in Europe or America repress the emotions. That is but the beginning of the mastery. When they are as great as this group of young men, they will show the spirit of the thing, not the emotion of it. Emotions are red. This is pure white, don't you see?”
For three days Warsaw had been upheaved in excitement. On the afternoon that the messenger from Lonegan brought the news of the cablegram, Berthe and Peter were planning an excursion into the country for the next day. She watched him closely as he read, and was sensitive enough to realize the importance of the message, before he spoke.... He found her gray eyes upon him. She chose her own way to break the tension:
“The country is heaven, no doubt about that. One must die to get there. Also one must live just so. Even when I was little, something always happened—just as we were planning to set out for the country.”
He showed her the message, but had hardly heard her words. His discovery of this slender solitary red-lipped girl and what it meant, was rarely clear at this moment. She had awakened him plane by plane, awakened his passion and his mercy and his intuition.
“Tell me again what you said about the country. I was away for a minute.”
“It is hard to think of a little excursion to the fields—with such a holiday ahead, as you are called upon.”
“I wasn't thinking of that either, Berthe, but of you.”
“Of course, you will go?”