The Penalty | Page 9

beautiful, and partly because her work, as far as she had gone in it, was really good. What she lacked, they said, was inspiration, experience, and knowledge of life. When these things came to her in due time, her technique would be quite equal to expressing them.
Wilmot's dream of being much in Barbara's studio proved negotiable only as a dream. Barbara began a fountain for her father's garden at Clovelly, and during the modelling of the central figure the studio was no place for a modest young man. He had one glimpse through the half-open door of a girl with very red hair and very white skin, and he turned and beat a decided retreat, blushing furiously. He did not repeat his visit to her studio until Barbara assured him that the nymph had put on her clothes and gone away. Then, much to his disgust, he found there a young fellow named Scupper, who smoked a vile pipe and had dirty finger-nails and was allowed to make himself at home because he had recently exhibited a portrait bust that everybody was praising (even Wilmot) and because he had volunteered during a delightful contemplation of Barbara's face to do her portrait and tell her all that he had learned from his great master, Rodin.
The little beast had the assurance of the devil. He praised, blamed, patronized, puffed his pipe, and dwelt with superiority on topics which are best left alone, until Wilmot wanted to kick him downstairs. Scupper, aware of Wilmot's dislike for him, and thoroughly cognizant of its causes, did his best to goad the "young prude" (as he chose to consider him) into open hostility. He strutted, boasted, puffed, and talked loosely without avail. Wilmot maintained a beautiful calm, and the more he raged internally the more Chesterfieldian and gorgeously at ease his manners became. Barbara enjoyed the contest between the terrier and the Newfoundland hugely. Personally she disliked Scupper almost as much as she liked Wilmot, but artistically she admired him tremendously and felt that his judgments and criticisms were the most valuable things to be had in the whole city.
Wilmot not only kept his temper, but outstayed his antagonist. The latter gone, he turned upon Barbara, and she in mock terror held up her hands for mercy; but Wilmot was not in a merciful mood.
"When you imagine that you are uplifting the cause of art, Barbs, are you sure that you aren't debasing it? You won't marry a man who has always loved you. _Art._ You put marble and bronze higher than little children. _Art._ You allow disreputable, unwashed men to talk in your presence as that man talked. _Art._ You hire people of bad character to sit for you, and people of no character. All art. You treat them in a spirit of friendliness and camaraderie. You affect to place art above all considerations; above character, above morals; worse, you place it above cleanliness.
"A man--yes, take him for all and all, a man--eats out his heart for you; desires only to live for you, only to die for you, only to lie at your feet afterward--that is nothing to you. You do not even care to listen. You would rather hear through a braggart, indecent mouth that ought to be sewed up what Rodin said about Phidias. It seems finer to you to be an artist than a woman, and you so beautiful and so dear!"
Barbara made no answer. She looked a little hurt, possibly a little sullen. She had a way of looking a little sullen (it did not happen often) when she could not hit upon just the words she wanted to express her thoughts. She felt that her attitude toward life was almost entirely right, almost entirely justifiable, and she wanted to explain exactly why this was thus, and couldn't. So after a silence she said:
"Oh, I'm just a little pig. Why bother about me? And besides, it's no use."
"Don't say that, Barbara. There must be use in it. Don't you know in your heart that some day you are going to marry me?"
"No," she said. "Sometimes I've thought so, but I don't know it." She selected an arrow from her quiver, touched the point with venom, and because she had not enjoyed being scolded shot it into him. "And at the moment I don't think so."
Wilmot spoke on patiently. "Every true lover, Barbs," he said, "comes in time to the end of his patience and the end of his endurance."
"And then he ceases from loving--and troubling."
"He does not. When he knows as I know what is best for her happiness and for his, and when he finds that humbleness, and begging, and gentleness, and persuasion are of no avail--why, then if he's a man he makes her love him, makes her