There was the matter of the models. Kirk had supposed that it was only in the comic papers that the artist’s wife objected to his employing models. He had classed it with the mother-in-law joke, respecting it for its antiquity, but not imagining that it ever really happened. And Ruth had brought this absurd situation into the sphere of practical politics only a few days ago.
Since his marriage Kirk had dropped his work almost entirely. There had seemed to be no time for it. He liked to spend his days going round the stores with Ruth, buying her things, or looking in at the windows of Fifth Avenue shops and choosing what he would buy her when he had made his fortune. It was agreed upon between them that he was to make his fortune some day.
Kirk’s painting had always been more of a hobby with him than a profession. He knew that he had talent, but talent without hard work is a poor weapon, and he had always shirked hard work. He had an instinct for colour, but his drawing was uncertain. He hated linework, while knowing that only through steady practice at linework could he achieve his artistic salvation. He was an amateur, and a lazy amateur.
But once in a while the work fever would grip him. It had gripped him a few days before Hank’s visit. An idea for a picture had come to him, and he had set to work upon it with his usual impulsiveness.
This had involved the arrival of Miss Hilda Vince at the studio. There was no harm in Miss Vince. Her morals were irreproachable. She supported a work-shy father, and was engaged to be married to a young gentleman who travelled for a hat firm. But she was of a chatty disposition and no respecter of persons. She had posed frequently for Kirk in his bachelor days, and was accustomed to call him by his first name—a fact which Kirk had forgotten until Ruth, who had been out in the park, came in.
Miss Vince was saying at the moment: “So I says to her, ‘Kirk’s just phoned to me to sit.’ ‘What! Kirk!’ she says. ‘Is he doin’ a bit of work for a change? Well, it’s about time.’ ‘Aw, Kirk don’t need to work,’ I says. ‘He’s a plute. He’s got it in gobs.’ So—”
“I didn’t know you were busy, dear,” said Ruth. “I won’t interrupt you.”
She went out.
“Was that your wife?” inquired Miss Vince. “She’s got a sweet face. Say, I read the piece about you and her in the paper. You certainly got a nerve, Kirk, breaking in on the millionaires that way.”
That night Ruth spoke her mind about Miss Vince. It was in vain that Kirk touched on the work-shy father, dwelt feelingly on the young gentleman who travelled in hats. Ruth had made up her mind. It was thumbs down for Miss Vince.
“But if I’m to paint,” said Kirk, “I must have models.”
“There must be hundreds who don’t call you by your Christian name.”
“After about five minutes they all do,” said Kirk. “It’s a way they’ve got. They mean no harm.”
Ruth then made this brilliant suggestion: “Kirk, dear, why don’t you paint landscapes?”
In spite of his annoyance, he laughed.
“Why don’t I paint landscapes, Ruth? Because I’m not a landscape painter, that’s why.”
“You could learn.”
“It’s a different branch of the trade altogether. You might just as well tell a catcher to pitch.”
“Well, anyhow,” reported Ruth with spirit, “I won’t have that Vince creature in the place again.”
It was the first time she had jerked at the reins or given any sign that she was holding them, and undoubtedly this was the moment at which Kirk should have said: “My dearest, the time has come for me to state plainly that my soul is my own. I decline to give in to this absurd suggestion. Marriage is an affair of give and take, not a circus where one party holds the hoop while the other jumps through and shams dead. We shall be happier later on if we get this clearly into our heads now.”
What he did say was: “Very well, dear. I’ll write and tell her not to come.”
He knew he was being abominably weak, but he did not care. He even felt a certain pleasure in his surrender. Big, muscular men are given to this feebleness with women. Hercules probably wore an idiotic grin of happiness when he spun wool for Omphale.
Since then the picture had been laid aside, but Kirk’s desire to be up and at it had grown with inaction. When a lazy man does make up his mind to assail a piece of work, he is like a dog with a bone.
The music had stopped. Ruth swung round.
“What are you dreaming about, Kirk?”
Kirk came to himself with a start.
“I was thinking of a lot of things. For one, about that picture of mine.”
“What about it?”
“Well, when I was going to finish it.”
“Why don’t you?”
Kirk laughed.
“Where’s my model? You’ve scared her up a tree, and I can’t coax her down.”
Ruth came over to him and sat down on a low chair at his side. She put her arm round his waist and rested her head in the hollow of his shoulder.
“Is he pining for his horrid Vince girl, the poor boy?”
“He certainly is,” said Kirk. “Or at any rate, for some understudy to her.”
“We must think. Do they all call you Kirk?”
“I’ve never met one who didn’t.”
“What horrible creatures you artists are!”
“My dear kid, you don’t understand the thing at all. When you’re painting a model she ceases to be a girl at all. You don’t think of her as anything except a sort of lay-figure.”
“Good gracious! Does your lay-figure
