Arlo Bates

“ She had all at once become conscious that she desired eagerly to know the nature of the sculptor's feelings toward his old love. Why, she asked herself, was she so interested in what after all did not personally concern her. A quick emotion, almost too vague to be called a thought, made her cheek flame.
"No, no," she said half aloud. "It is only that I am touched by
Ninitta's sadness. It is nothing more."
But her breath came more quickly, and it was with difficulty that upon re-entering her studio she assumed a quiet mien, lest her model should guess at her unfulfilled errand. ”

“ Helen said in a voice suddenly firm, but which yet showed her inward agitation, "no; there is Ninitta. I have suffered too much myself to be willing to try to come to happiness over any woman's heart. It is better that I should go."
"Ninitta!" Herman burst out. "She has no claim; she will not even care; she—"
"No," interrupted Helen, laying her hand upon his arm. "You cannot say that; you know it is not true. You can see as well as I that Ninitta is pining her life out over your neglect. We are not free to break her heart when you yourself taught her to love." ”

“ It is doubtful if Helen fully comprehended the effect of these words upon her guest. Every fiber of Edith's being tingled. All her most sacred principles seemed outraged. She in some remote way felt, moreover, as if to hear without protest so lax notions of the responsibilities of marriage was to stain her womanhood and dim the luster of her modesty.
"How dared he introduce you to me?" she cried. "You are the wife of a murderer and you defend his crime; you pretend to be a widow, you ignore your marriage——"
"Stop," the hostess said with dignity. "We need not go over the ground. ”

“ Herman answered, "else we are not artists. You certainly find joy and support in your art."
"Yes," Helen said with a sigh; "but I fancy the joy of creation, great as it is, can never be so satisfying to a woman as to a man. It is humiliating to confess—or it is presumptuous to boast, I am not sure which—but a woman is never so fully an artist as a man. He is in great moments all artist; but a woman is never able to lay herself aside even in her most imaginative moods." ”

“ The sculptor led the way through a couple of chambers, bringing her out at the top of the stairs leading down in the corner of his studio. The morning sun shone in through the window far up in the side wall, tinged to rich colors by the stained glass which Herman had set there. The statues and casts looked in the light coming from above them, as if they had just emerged from garments of shadows which yet lay fallen about their feet. Helen uttered an exclamation of admiration.
"How charming the studio is in this light," she said. "It is like looking down into a ghost world." ”

“ His passionate outburst took Helen unaware; she scarcely knew what she did, and she became suddenly aware of a truth so overwhelming that every thing else faded into insignificance beside it.
"I love you!" he cried out; and at the word she first knew, with a poignant pang of mingled bliss and anguish, that she too loved him.
It seemed to her that some power above her own volition ruled her, as in moments of high excitement the body sometimes appears to declare its independence of the will, and to act wholly by its own decisions. ”

“ I'm sure I need it far more than Arthur does. He's going to be married, his pictures are praised and are beginning to sell, he has life before him and every thing to live for, while I have nothing."
"Life is before you, too," answered her husband gravely, putting his hand upon her arm to prevent her flying under the wheels of a carriage which in her absorption she had not noticed. "Look here, Helen; it wouldn't be any better if Arthur wanted to marry you. You are too melancholy alone without having him to push you deeper into the slough of despond." ”

“ He looked into the fire with a smile of mingled bitterness and complacency, half ashamed, half amused at the view which introspection gave him.
But whenever into his musings came the thought of Helen it rankled like a poisoned barb. For he secretly believed that Helen loved him, and although if a man humiliates himself in the eyes of the woman he loves it is as bitter as death; yet to prove unworthy in the sight of her who hopelessly loves him, contains a more subtly envenomed shaft, which wounds that most sensitive spot in a sensuous man's nature—his vanity. ”

“ Death that crushes the emotions, that kills the passions, that pollutes the flesh; the monster which debauches all that is sacred in the physical, that degrades to the level of the lowest all that is high in the intellectual—is this your idea of the moral? The coarsest rioting of sensual life is sacred beside it. Death moral? Mon Dieu, Helen, how you do abuse terms!"
Fenton was continually treading upon the dangerous edge between pathos and bathos, between impressiveness and absurdity. ”

“ Helen had freed herself as far as she was able from the marriage bond which had so galled her, and she was glad to forget that such a tie had ever existed, but she yet remembered that she was still a wife, and the kiss of a man not her husband overwhelmed her with shuddering humiliation and fear. She struggled from her lover's embrace with such an expression of terror upon her face, that he started back amazed and grieved. ”

“ Helen became suddenly calm. The color faded slowly from her cheeks, and her husband, watching her narrowly, saw her beautiful lips assume a new expression of firmness and determination. She unconsciously lifted her head into a more erect carnage. Her eyes were moist and full of feeling. Slowly in her mind formed a resolve, and with a full knowledge of the renunciation of self which it involved, she called up all the nobility of her soul to aid her in living up to it. ”

“ It was hard, but Helen unflinchingly analyzed the nature of her lover, and while she could not believe that he would ever feel for his wife the grand passion which she had herself inspired in his breast, she saw for him a tranquil future in which his wife's devotion would be met with enduring, even with increasing affection, which if not love, would be so like it that Ninitta, at least, would never distinguish; and in which her husband would find comfort and warmth, if not fire and aspiration. ”

“ In this joyous mood she came to the studio. A sudden thought darted through her mind, with no apparent connection, of the talk of the night previous, and for an instant her face clouded; but the exhilaration of the morning and the reaction from the sad, overstrained state in which her husband had left her, both helped her to throw off all mournful thoughts. Ninitta had not arrived, and Mrs. Greyson busied herself about the bas-relief, preparing for work. Suddenly the tap of Grant Herman sounded upon her door. ”

“ It means an end of every thing. It means annihilation; it means getting rid of this nightmare of existence. I can remember when I dreaded the idea of annihilation, but I have come to feel that it is the only good to be desired. To be done with every thing and to forget every thing! Don't you see, Helen; I should never be satisfied with any thing short of omnipotence and omniscience, and annihilation is the only refuge for a nature like that. I want to be everything; to feel the joy of the conqueror and yet not miss the keen, fine pang of the conquered—Lowell says it somewhere ”

“ Her pure, sweet face, with its appealing dark eyes, was turned upward to her husband's, in an expression at once wistful and full of love. Edith had always a highbred air, and to-night her attitude and expression added the one charm of warmth and softness needed to make her most lovely and moving.
"You doubtless have some excellent reason," remarked Arthur smiling down on her.
"I am afraid of them; they are in arms against every thing that is acknowledged to be good." ”

“ It was feebly raining, the weather having been decidedly whimsical all that week, and the clouds rolled in ragged, sullen masses overhead. Helen felt the gloom of the day as a vague depression which she endeavored in vain to shake off, and hastened towards her studio, hoping to be able to lose herself in her work.
Picking her steps among the piles of fire-brick and terra-cotta which lumbered the yard and the long shed skirting the building, which was a terra-cotta manufactory, she let herself in at a side door and went directly to her studio. ”

“ Marriage is a crime! Think of the wretched folly of those who talk of the holiness of love's being protected by the sanctities of marriage. If love is holy, let it have way; if it is not, all the sacraments priests can devise cannot sanctify it."
"Then why, Arthur, do you marry at all?"
"Because marriage is a necessary evil as society is at present constituted."
"But," Helen said slowly, "you who pretend to have so little regard for society—"
"Ah, there it is," he interrupted. "Man is gregarious by instinct; he must do as his fellows do. ”

“ Arthur is as much of a heathen to-day as he ever was, only he is too fond of comfort to have the courage of his opinions."
Helen sighed.
"Truth to me," she said thoughtfully, "is whatever one sincerely believes; I cannot conceive of any other standard. One man's truth is often another's falsehood."
"You are as dull as a preface to-night, Helen; what carking care is gnawing at your vitals?" ”

“ All religions are only mankind's defiance of death more or less largely phrased."
"No," Helen said. "Not our defiance; our confession of a craven fear. I am afraid of death. I don't dare take my life."
"We are talking," responded her companion, in his turn leaving the table and approaching the window, "like a couple of unmitigated ghouls. I acknowledge your right to put aside your life if it bores you; man has at least that one inalienable right. But why should you? Art is left still."
"Art," she repeated with profound sadness; "yes, but a woman is never content with abstractions. ”

“ She was not the first woman who has vaguely felt that unreasoning jealousy and passion are admirable or even essential attributes of virility, and who has worshiped a man as much for his faults as for his virtues.
To the dream of meeting Herman with the proofs that he had been deceived, Ninitta had clung unyieldingly through the dreary years since the death of Hoffmeir, who had been kind to her for the sake of his shattered friendship with Herman, and for the sake, too, of his own hopeless love for herself. ”

“ The word which Edith had used had been most happily chosen. Her woman's instinct divined the loneliness which overwhelmed the widow, and this proof of her sympathy was the passport to Mrs. Greyson's heart. Loneliness was the feeling of which Helen was most of all conscious. The death of even an indifferent acquaintance often may seem to desolate the earth from its simple irremediableness, and much more does the removal of one near to us make the world appear half a void. ”

“ The outward bound steamer was almost ready to sail, and all the bustle attendant upon departure of an ocean craft eddied about three people who stood in a half-sheltered nook upon the wharf. They were saying little. Both Grant Herman and Ninitta kept their eyes fixed upon Helen, while her glance was cast to the ground, save when she raised her head in speaking.
The Italian from time to time took Helen's hand in hers and kissed it fondly.
"I pray the Madonna for you every night," she whispered in her native tongue, "that she will give you a safe voyage." ”

“ No woman recalls her childhood without regret, and despite the philosophy she had cultivated, Helen felt a deep sadness as the old days, somber and dull though they had been, rose before her. She hurried her step a little as if to escape her past, when a pleasant voice at her elbow said:
"Good morning, Helen. Upon what wickedness are you bent now. You go too fast to be on a good errand." ”

“ The strangeness, the unconventionality of the recitative, the wonderful, sad beauty of the poem, the dim light through which Helen's vibrating, passionate voice thrilled, all helped to impress the hearers. There was a personal quality about the chant which made it seem like a direct appeal from the singer to the heart of each listener. It came to each as a spontaneous outflowing of the singer's innermost self; a confidence made in mystic wise, sacred and inviolable, and setting him honored by receiving it forever from the common multitude of men. ”

“ Nor was he without a teasing pain, through a less noble trait in his nature, from the consciousness that he had loved Ninitta. Once the fires of love have burned out, any mortal is apt to be lost in amazed wonderment how they were ever kindled; and that it was hard for Grant Herman, at thirty-five, to understand how Grant Herman, at twenty-seven, could have adored an Italian peasant model is not so without precedent as to be wholly incomprehensible. ”

“ Nothing is more contradictory than a nascent passion, and, indeed, the tenderness of any woman for a man is not very profound if unmixed with some desire to escape from him.
All sorts of artistic rubbish had accumulated in the little gallery; broken casts, fragments of statues and vases, pieces of time discolored marble, and the thousand objects which make up the débris of a sculptor's studio. A bit of warm colored though faded tapestry hung dustily over the railing of the little balcony, making the white-plaster goddess appear doubly wan. ”

“ But with this emotion came, too, a subtle if now fainter sense of degradation that he was susceptible to this dangerous fascination, with a painful consciousness of how wide a moral gulf had opened between them by the anger and vulgar jealousy which Ninitta displayed. It is not impossible, too, that his instinctive clinging to Helen was a stronger power than he knew; while still through all his mingled emotions ran the resolve he had made to give himself up to his old betrothed.
"No," he said; yet as he moved slowly towards the door he had the air of a man who still deliberates. ”

“ The longer I live the less faith I have that a man evolves any thing from his inner consciousness. Fancies are only the lies of the mendacious brain, which perceives one thing and declares to us another."
"Go slow, Fenton," interrupted Herman, "you know our poor wits are apt to be dazzled by too much brilliancy."
"The age," Fenton rattled on, "blooms once into a great man as an aloe into a crown of bloom."
"Right in there," broke in Rangely, who longed for a share in the conversation, "just consider how necessary it is that every art producer shall be in sympathy with the human life about him. ”