Crucial Instances

present.”

“But he ought to go—you ought both to go this summer!” Mrs. Davant persisted. “I know Professor Wildmarsh and Professor Driffert and all the other critics think that Mr. Keniston’s never having been to Europe has given his work much of its wonderful individuality, its peculiar flavor and meaning—but now that his talent is formed, that he has full command of his means of expression,” (Claudia recognized one of Professor Driffert’s favorite formulas) “they all think he ought to see the work of the other great masters—that he ought to visit the home of his ancestors, as Professor Wildmarsh says!” She stretched an impulsive hand to Claudia. “You ought to let him go, Mrs. Keniston!”

Claudia accepted the admonition with the philosophy of the wife who is used to being advised on the management of her husband. “I sha’n’t interfere with him,” she declared; and Mrs. Davant instantly caught her up with a cry of, “Oh, it’s too lovely of you to say that!” With this exclamation she left Claudia to a silent renewal of wonder.

A moment later Keniston entered: to a mind curious in combinations it might have occurred that he had met Mrs. Davant on the door-step. In one sense he might, for all his wife cared, have met fifty Mrs. Davants on the door-step: it was long since Claudia had enjoyed the solace of resenting such coincidences. Her only thought now was that her husband’s first words might not improbably explain Mrs. Davant’s last; and she waited for him to speak.

He paused with his hands in his pockets before an unfinished picture on the easel; then, as his habit was, he began to stroll touristlike from canvas to canvas, standing before each in a musing ecstasy of contemplation that no readjustment of view ever seemed to disturb. Her eye instinctively joined his in its inspection; it was the one point where their natures merged. Thank God, there, was no doubt about the pictures! She was what she had always dreamed of being—the wife of a great artist. Keniston dropped into an armchair and filled his pipe. “How should you like to go to Europe?” he asked.

His wife looked up quickly. “When?”

“Now—this spring, I mean.” He paused to light the pipe. “I should like to be over there while these things are being exhibited.”

Claudia was silent.

“Well?” he repeated after a moment.

“How can we afford it?” she asked.

Keniston had always scrupulously fulfilled his duty to the mother and sister whom his marriage had dislodged; and Claudia, who had the atoning temperament which seeks to pay for every happiness by making it a source of fresh obligations, had from the outset accepted his ties with an exaggerated devotion. Any disregard of such a claim would have vulgarized her most delicate pleasures; and her husband’s sensitiveness to it in great measure extenuated the artistic obtuseness that often seemed to her like a failure of the moral sense. His loyalty to the dull women who depended on him was, after all, compounded of finer tissues than any mere sensibility to ideal demands.

“Oh, I don’t see why we shouldn’t,” he rejoined. “I think we might manage it.”

“At Mrs. Davant’s expense?” leaped from Claudia. She could not tell why she had said it; some inner barrier seemed to have given way under a confused pressure of emotions.

He looked up at her with frank surprise. “Well, she has been very jolly about it—why not? She has a tremendous feeling for art—the keenest I ever knew in a woman.” Claudia imperceptibly smiled. “She wants me to let her pay in advance for the four panels she has ordered for the Memorial Library. That would give us plenty of money for the trip, and my having the panels to do is another reason for my wanting to go abroad just now.”

“Another reason?”

“Yes; I’ve never worked on such a big scale. I want to see how those old chaps did the trick; I want to measure myself with the big fellows over there. An artist ought to, once in his life.”

She gave him a wondering look. For the first time his words implied a sense of possible limitation; but his easy tone seemed to retract what they conceded. What he really wanted was fresh food for his self-satisfaction: he was like an army that moves on after exhausting the resources of the country.

Womanlike, she abandoned the general survey of the case for the consideration of a minor point.

“Are you sure you can do that kind of thing?” she asked.

“What kind of thing?”

“The panels.”

He glanced at her indulgently: his self-confidence was too impenetrable to feel the pin-prick of such a doubt.

“Immensely sure,” he said with a smile.

“And you don’t mind taking so much money from her in advance?”

He stared. “Why should I? She’ll get it back—with interest!” He laughed and drew at his pipe. “It will be an uncommonly interesting experience. I shouldn’t wonder if it freshened me up a bit.”

She looked at him again. This second hint of self-distrust struck her as the sign of a quickened sensibility. What if, after all, he was beginning to be dissatisfied with his work? The thought filled her with a renovating sense of his sufficiency.

III

They stopped in London to see the National Gallery.

It was thus that, in their inexperience, they had narrowly put it; but in reality every stone of the streets, every trick of the atmosphere, had its message of surprise for their virgin sensibilities. The pictures were simply the summing up, the final interpretation, of the cumulative pressure of an unimagined world; and it seemed to Claudia that long before they reached the doors of the gallery she had some intuitive revelation of what awaited them within.

They moved about from room to room without exchanging a word. The vast noiseless spaces seemed full of