Youth and the Bright Medusa | Page 8

glory; but Hedger did not see the
moon; he was looking, murderously, for men. Presently two, wearing
straw hats and white trousers and carrying canes, came down the steps
from his house. He rose and dogged them across the Square. They were
laughing and seemed very much elated about something. As one
stopped to light a cigarette, Hedger caught from the other:
"Don't you think she has a beautiful talent?"
His companion threw away his match. "She has a beautiful figure."
They both ran to catch the stage.
Hedger went back to his studio. The light was shining from her transom.
For the first time he violated her privacy at night, and peered through
that fatal aperture. She was sitting, fully dressed, in the window,
smoking a cigarette and looking out over the housetops. He watched
her until she rose, looked about her with a disdainful, crafty smile, and
turned out the light.

The next morning, when Miss Bower went out, Hedger followed her.
Her white skirt gleamed ahead of him as she sauntered about the
Square. She sat down behind the Garibaldi statue and opened a music
book she carried. She turned the leaves carelessly, and several times
glanced in his direction. He was on the point of going over to her, when
she rose quickly and looked up at the sky. A flock of pigeons had risen
from somewhere in the crowded Italian quarter to the south, and were
wheeling rapidly up through the morning air, soaring and dropping,
scattering and coming together, now grey, now white as silver, as they
caught or intercepted the sunlight. She put up her hand to shade her
eyes and followed them with a kind of defiant delight in her face.
Hedger came and stood beside her. "You've surely seen them before?"
"Oh, yes," she replied, still looking up. "I see them every day from my
windows. They always come home about five o'clock. Where do they
live?"
"I don't know. Probably some Italian raises them for the market. They
were here long before I came, and I've been here four years."
"In that same gloomy room? Why didn't you take mine when it was
vacant?"
"It isn't gloomy. That's the best light for painting."
"Oh, is it? I don't know anything about painting. I'd like to see your
pictures sometime. You have such a lot in there. Don't they get dusty,
piled up against the wall like that?"
"Not very. I'd be glad to show them to you. Is your name really Eden
Bower? I've seen your letters on the table."
"Well, it's the name I'm going to sing under. My father's name is
Bowers, but my friend Mr. Jones, a Chicago newspaper man who
writes about music, told me to drop the 's.' He's crazy about my voice."
Miss Bower didn't usually tell the whole story,--about anything. Her

first name, when she lived in Huntington, Illinois, was Edna, but Mr.
Jones had persuaded her to change it to one which he felt would be
worthy of her future. She was quick to take suggestions, though she
told him she "didn't see what was the matter with 'Edna.'"
She explained to Hedger that she was going to Paris to study. She was
waiting in New York for Chicago friends who were to take her over,
but who had been detained. "Did you study in Paris?" she asked.
"No, I've never been in Paris. But I was in the south of France all last
summer, studying with C----. He's the biggest man among the
moderns,--at least I think so."
Miss Bower sat down and made room for him on the bench. "Do tell
me about it. I expected to be there by this time, and I can't wait to find
out what it's like."
Hedger began to relate how he had seen some of this Frenchman's work
in an exhibition, and deciding at once that this was the man for him, he
had taken a boat for Marseilles the next week, going over steerage. He
proceeded at once to the little town on the coast where his painter lived,
and presented himself. The man never took pupils, but because Hedger
had come so far, he let him stay. Hedger lived at the master's house and
every day they went out together to paint, sometimes on the blazing
rocks down by the sea. They wrapped themselves in light woollen
blankets and didn't feel the heat. Being there and working with C----
was being in Paradise, Hedger concluded; he learned more in three
months than in all his life before.
Eden Bower laughed. "You're a funny fellow. Didn't you do anything
but work? Are the women very beautiful? Did you have awfully good
things to eat and drink?"
Hedger said some of the women were fine