Between Friends | Page 9

breakfast table. When you and I are ready to quit, Graylock,

Providence has created a species of man who settles our bills."
He threw back his head, inhaled the smoke of his cigarette, sent two
thin streams through his nose.
"Maybe Drene may marry her himself. But--I don't believe he'll have
to. . . . Now, about those contracts--" he affected a yawn, "--go on and
tell him, Guilder," he added, his words distorted by another yawn.
He stepped down to the floor from his perch on the table, stretched his
arms, looking affably all the while at Graylock, who had never moved a
muscle.
"I believe you had a run-in with that Cecile girl once, didn't you,
Graylock? Like the rest of us, eh? Oh, well--my hat off to old Drene if
he wins out. I hold no malice. After all, Graylock, what's a woman
between friends?"
And he nodded gaily at Graylock and sauntered leisurely to the
window.
And kept his back turned, fearful of exploding with laughter in the very
face of the man who had been staring at him out of pale, unchanging
eyes so steadily and so long.
Guilder's patient, bored, but moderate voice was raised once more:
"In regard to the letting of these contracts--"
But Graylock, staring at Quair's back, neither heeded nor heard him, for
his brain was still ringing with the mockery of Quair's words--"What is
a woman between friends?" And now, for the first time, he was
beginning to understand what the answer might be.

III
She had not posed for Drene during the last two weeks, and he had

begun to miss her, after his own fashion--that is, he thought of her
when not preoccupied and sometimes desired her companionship when
unoccupied.
And one evening he went to his desk, rummaged among note-books,
and scribbled sheets of paper, until he found her address, which he
could never remember, wrote it down on another slip of paper,
pocketed it, and went out to his dinner.
But as he dined, other matters reoccupied his mind, matters
professional, schemes little and great, broad and in detail, which
gradually, though not excluding her entirely, quenched his desire to see
her at that particular time.
Sometimes it was sheer disinclination to make an effort to
communicate with her, sometimes, and usually, the self-centering
concentration which included himself and his career, as well as his
work, seemed to obliterate even any memory of her existence.
Now and then, when alone in his shabby bedroom, reading a dull book,
or duly preparing to retire, far in the dim recesses of heart and brain a
faint pain became apparent--if it could still be called pain, this vague
ghost of anger stirring in the ashes of dead years--and at such moments
he thought of Graylock, and of another; and the partly paralyzed
emotion, which memory of these two evoked, stirred him finally to
think of Cecile.
It was at such times that he always determined to seek her the next day
and continue with her what had been begun--an intimacy which
depended upon his own will; a destiny for her which instinct whispered
was within his own control. But the next day found him at work;
models of various types, ages, and degrees of stupidity came, posed,
were paid, and departed; his studies for the groups in collaboration with
Guilder and Quair were approaching the intensely interesting
period--that stage of completion where composition has been
determined upon and the excitement of developing the construction and
the technical charm of modeling begins.

And evening always found him physically tired and mentally
satisfied--or perturbed--to the exclusion of such minor interests as life
is made of--dress, amusement, food, women. Between a man and a
beloved profession in full shock of embrace there is no real room for
these or thought of these.
He ate irregularly and worked with the lack of wisdom characteristic of
creative ability, and he grew thinner and grayer at the temples, and
grayer of flesh, too, so that within a month, between the torrid New
York summer and his own unwisdom, he became again the gaunt,
silent, darkly absorbed recluse, never even stirring abroad for air until
some half-deadened pang of hunger, or the heavy warning of a
headache, set him in reluctant motion.
He heard of Cecile now and then; Cosby had used her for a figure on a
fountain destined to embellish the estate of a wealthy young man
somewhere or other; Greer employed her for the central figure of
Innocence in his lovely and springlike decoration for some Western
public edifice. Quair had met her several times at Manhattan Beach
with various and assorted wealthy young men.
And one evening Guilder came alone to his studio and found him lying
on the lounge, his lank, muscular