The Pagans | Page 7

the beautiful canvas. "Art in America is simply an
irreclaimable mendicant that stands on the street corners and holds out
the catch-penny hand of a beggar."
"Oh, no," Miss Caldwell replied, turning her clear glance to his, "that is
only an impostor that pretends to be art. The real goddess has her

temples here."
"Yes," returned he, with a laugh that covered a sneer, "but not in the
way you mean."
A shadow passed over her face; she turned a wistful glance towards
him.
"I cannot understand, Arthur," she said, "why you speak so bitterly
about art here. Of course, all great men are apt to be misunderstood at
first, but you--"
"I am over estimated," he interrupted, inly vexed at having given the
conversation this turn. "It is only for the sake of talking, ma petite.
Don't mind it."
"But, Arthur," she persisted, "I want to say something. Uncle Peter
talks as if you sided with the artists here who--who--"
She was wholly at a loss to phrase what she wished to say, both
because her ideas were rather vague and because she feared lest she
might offend her lover by talking upon a subject which he had
markedly avoided. He made now a fresh effort to divert the talk into a
new channel.
"Never mind the artists," he said, "we really must go. Besides, you are
only in town for a day and it is no use to attempt the discussion of
questions which involve the entire order of the universe. I promised
Mrs. Calvin I'd bring you back in half-an-hour, and we've been here
twice that time already."
He ran on brightly and rapidly, leading the way out of the gallery and
down the stairs, and she followed with a suspicion of shadow upon her
face as if the subject of which she had spoken was one of real
importance to her.
"Come in and see the jolly old Pasht," Arthur suggested, as they
descended the wide staircase.
She acquiesced by turning with him into the room devoted to the Way
collection of Egyptian antiquities, in the center of which stands a
somewhat mutilated granite statue of the goddess Pasht, the cat-headed
deity, referred to the time of Amenophis III, about 1500 B.C. Calm,
impassive and saturnine the goddess sits, holding the sign of life with
lifeless fingers in as unconscious mockery now as when the symbol
was placed within the stony grasp by some unrecorded sculptor dead
more than thirty centuries ago. All that it has looked upon, all the

shifting scenes and varied lands upon which have gazed those sightless
eyes, have left no record on that emotionless face, whose lips still keep
unchanged their faint smile beneath which lurks a sneer.
Arthur and Edith stood before it, as a pair of Egyptian lovers may have
stood long ago, and for a time regarded it in silence, each moved in a
way, though very differently, as their temperaments differed.
"It is the patron saint of our Pagans," the artist said at length. "How
much the old creature knows, if she only chose to tell. She could give
us more genuine wisdom than we shall hear in our whole lives, if she
would but condescend to speak."
"Wisdom always knows the value of silence," Edith returned smiling.
"But Pasht belies her sex by not being a communicative party," was her
companion's reply; "although communicativeness was never a
characteristic of the gods."
"No irreverence, sir," Edith said with an air of mock authority, "even
for these dethroned deities. What were the attributes of your cat-headed
goddess?"
"Oh, various things. Pasht means, I believe, the devouring one, and she
has another name signifying 'she who kindles a fire.' She was the
goddess of war and of libraries, and the 'mistress of thought.' A sort of
Egyptian Minerva, I suppose."
"Violence and wisdom always seemed to me a strange combination,"
Edith said thoughtfully, regarding the stone image intently, as if to drag
from its cold lips a solution of the difficulty.
"You overlook the destructive power of words; besides, the sword or
the tongue, what does it matter? Life is always a conflict, and it is of
minor importance what the weapons are. It is appropriate enough for
this dilapidated, but eminently respectable female to be the figure-head
of a society like the Pagans where we fight with words but may come
to blows any time."
He spoke gayly, pleased with having put entirely out of the
conversation the unpleasant subject of his relations to her uncle, Mr.
Peter Calvin, upon which Edith had touched. But he who talks with a
woman must expect the unexpected, and as they turned away from the
statue of Pasht, and walked towards the street where the carriage was
waiting, Miss Caldwell abruptly brought the