The Lesson of the Master | Page 9

The lines of her face were those of a woman grown, but the child
lingered on in her complexion and in the sweetness of her mouth.
Above all she was natural - that was indubitable now; more natural than
he had supposed at first, perhaps on account of her aesthetic toggery,
which was conventionally unconventional, suggesting what he might
have called a tortuous spontaneity. He had feared that sort of thing in
other cases, and his fears had been justified; for, though he was an artist
to the essence, the modern reactionary nymph, with the brambles of the
woodland caught in her folds and a look as if the satyrs had toyed with
her hair, made him shrink not as a man of starch and patent leather, but
as a man potentially himself a poet or even a faun. The girl was really
more candid than her costume, and the best proof of it was her
supposing her liberal character suited by any uniform. This was a
fallacy, since if she was draped as a pessimist he was sure she liked the
taste of life. He thanked her for her appreciation - aware at the same
time that he didn't appear to thank her enough and that she might think
him ungracious. He was afraid she would ask him to explain something
he had written, and he always winced at that - perhaps too timidly - for
to his own ear the explanation of a work of art sounded fatuous. But he
liked her so much as to feel a confidence that in the long run he should
be able to show her he wasn't rudely evasive. Moreover she surely
wasn't quick to take offence, wasn't irritable; she could be trusted to
wait. So when he said to her, "Ah don't talk of anything I've done, don't
talk of it HERE; there's another man in the house who's the actuality!" -
when he uttered this short sincere protest it was with the sense that she
would see in the words neither mock humility nor the impatience of a
successful man bored with praise.
"You mean Mr. St. George - isn't he delightful?"
Paul Overt met her eyes, which had a cool morning-light that would
have half-broken his heart if he hadn't been so young. "Alas I don't
know him. I only admire him at a distance."
"Oh you must know him - he wants so to talk to you," returned Miss
Fancourt, who evidently had the habit of saying the things that, by her
quick calculation, would give people pleasure. Paul saw how she would
always calculate on everything's being simple between others.

"I shouldn't have supposed he knew anything about me," he professed.
"He does then - everything. And if he didn't I should be able to tell
him."
"To tell him everything?" our friend smiled.
"You talk just like the people in your book!" she answered.
"Then they must all talk alike."
She thought a moment, not a bit disconcerted. "Well, it must be so
difficult. Mr. St. George tells me it IS - terribly. I've tried too - and I
find it so. I've tried to write a novel."
"Mr. St. George oughtn't to discourage you," Paul went so far as to say.
"You do much more - when you wear that expression."
"Well, after all, why try to be an artist?" the young man pursued. "It's
so poor - so poor!"
"I don't know what you mean," said Miss Fancourt, who looked grave.
"I mean as compared with being a person of action - as living your
works."
"But what's art but an intense life - if it be real?" she asked. "I think it's
the only one - everything else is so clumsy!" Her companion laughed,
and she brought out with her charming serenity what next struck her.
"It's so interesting to meet so many celebrated people."
"So I should think - but surely it isn't new to you."
"Why I've never seen any one - any one: living always in Asia."
The way she talked of Asia somehow enchanted him. "But doesn't that
continent swarm with great figures? Haven't you administered
provinces in India and had captive rajahs and tributary princes chained
to your car?"
It was as if she didn't care even SHOULD he amuse himself at her cost.
"I was with my father, after I left school to go out there. It was
delightful being with him - we're alone together in the world, he and I -
but there was none of the society I like best. One never heard of a
picture - never of a book, except bad ones."
"Never of a picture? Why, wasn't all life a picture?"
She looked over the delightful place where they sat. "Nothing to