"His papers and his policy are piffling," he summed up at last, as they walked down the Avenue, "but I must say I like the man himself--he is the first person of distinction I have seen since I left France."
"Darling," he seized her hand and pressed it, "I said the first person, not the first immortal!" He had a way of bestowing little endearments in public, which Mary found very attractive, even while her training obliged her to class them as solecisms.
"I felt sure you would like him. He seems to me charming," she said, withdrawing the hand with a smile.
"Grundy!" he teased at this. "Yes, the man is all right, but if that is a sample of their attitude toward original work over here we have a pretty prospect of success. 'Genius, get thee behind me!' would sum it up. Imbeciles!" He strode on, his face mutinous.
Mary was thinking. She knew that Farraday's criticism of her husband's work was just. The word "sinister" had struck home to her. It could be applied, she felt, with equal truth to all his large paintings but one--the Danaë.
"Stefan," she asked, "what did you think of his advice to win the public first by smiles?"
"Tennysonian!" pronounced Stefan, using what she knew to be his final adjective of condemnation.
"A little Victorian, perhaps," she admitted, smiling at this succinct repudiation. "Nevertheless, I'm inclined to think he was right. There is a sort of Pan-inspired terror in your work, you know."
He appeared struck. "Mary, I believe you've hit it!" he exclaimed, suddenly standing still. "I've never thought of it like that before--the thing that makes my work unique, I mean. Like the music of Pan, it's outside humanity, because I am."
"Don't say that, dear," she interrupted, shocked.
"Yes, I am. I hate my kind--all except a handful. I love beauty. It is not my fault that humanity is ugly."
Mary was deeply disturbed. Led on by a chance phrase of hers, he was actually boasting of just that lack which was becoming her secret fear for him. She touched his arm, pleadingly.
"Stefan, don't speak like that; it hurts me dreadfully. It is awful for any one to build up a barrier between himself and the world. It means much unhappiness, both for himself and others."
He laughed affectionately at her. "Why, sweet, what do we care? I love you enough to make the balance true. You are on my side of the barrier, shutting me in with beauty."