He threw a lighted match on to the fire, the escaping gases burst into flame, and cheerfulness was established in the grate.
A trivial incident, but it was recognised by them both in after years as having served to cement their comradeship.
CHAPTER VII.
The friendship between them ripened imperceptibly. Each day brought its tiny thread linking them together, so gradually, so subtly, that it was not until long afterwards that they realised the immense strength of the bond. At first it was mere honest liking on both sides, a pleasant consciousness of discovery, an ordinary attraction between two natures, distinct, yet more or less complementary. Clytie found it written in her Book of New Formulas that the loyal friendship between a man and a woman was a strengthening element of existence. In her fierce pride and young vigour she would not allow that each supplied what the other lacked, according to the popular theory—the man strength, the woman grace—but asserted strenuously the truth that each could lend the other elements of strength the same in degree, but different in kind, owing to the difference of sex. If it had been suggested to her that her weaker woman's nature instinctively, in spite of perfect emancipation and proud independence, sought the man's protecting fibre, the whole amazon within her would have been up in arms. She found in Kent a man whom she could meet upon a ground of perfect equality—perfectly even, neither blocked by prejudices and social barriers nor haunted by sexual spectres. She was woman enough, however, to perceive intuitively certain shynesses in Kent, resulting from a half knowledge of her, that would have kept him aloof in spite of a very sensible attraction towards her; and in showing him, therefore, that this attraction was mutual she felt no compunction,—rather pride, on the contrary, in reaching a superior plane in which conduct was measured by superior standards.
And thus it came about that the eternal feminine once more deceived itself, mistaking nature for what it called the Fine Art of Life.
Kent, for his part, did not attempt to realise the charm that made his fingers close daily on the handle of the studio door. He accepted the offered friendship, and returned it as frankly as it was given. It became as natural to stop at the studio, before mounting to his attics on his return home from the Museum, as to burst into the South Kensington “monastery” for a midnight rubber. Variety, fresh interests, were brought into his life, vivid as it was with darling hopes and full working energies. It was refreshing to come once again into the sphere, familiar and dear to him during his father's lifetime, of practical art. It was something for him to look forward to, during his tramp home—the stage nearer completeness effected during a day's work in an artistic creation. Gradually, in his blunt, paternal way, he constituted himself the censor of Clytie's work, criticising irregularities, suggesting treatment. There grew within him, too, a brotherly kindness towards Winifred, who looked forward also to his afternoon visit, when she would shyly uncover the small canvas and receive with a gratified flush his meed of appreciation.
He arrived after the tea-things had been cleared away, when the day's work was over, in the twilight hour, outstaying Winifred a short while, whose evening family meal was half an hour before Clytie's dinner. It was in these short periods of companionship, when they were alone together, that, unconsciously to themselves, the finer touches were added to the broader intimacy that the previous half hour had brought one step further in development. Piece by piece, by means of a reference here, a petulant outburst there, he grew familiar with the ambitions and struggles of her past life. He was quick to catch a certain note of disappointment. She had not yet become a great artist, was defiantly certain that she could never be one.
“Of course you won't if you use your art as a stepping-stone to life,” he said one day.