The man who sat listening drew a long breath. He was a rich idler with a good deal of worldly wisdom, but he loved and admired his erratic friend. He felt that much of what he said was sophistry, wholly or in part; but there was a charm about the earnest manner, the musical voice, and the flashing brevity of statement, more pleasing to his ear than sounder logic from a surer reasoner.
It was nearly dark now in the studio. The artist halted in his march, and offered to light the gas.
"Not for the world, Julian; I am far too happy in the dark. I was just thinking what a glorious agitator you would make; you would carry all before you. I wonder you have never dabbled in politics or socialism. Now I think of it, I have never heard you mention these things. I suppose you belong to one or the other of the great parties, however."
"Politics? Party? Good heavens, no! I never meddle with such things; it is one step lower than I have ever gone."
"But a man must stand somewhere. He that stands nowhere stands upon nothing."
The artist paused before the open window and stood looking out upon the dusk of the little scented garden. A faint reflected glimmer from some far-away lamp dimly illuminated one side of his face, silhouetting his striking profile sharply against a ground of blackness.
"If you mean," he began, slowly, "that I should have some opinions, then I will tell you what they are.
"I believe neither in tariff nor trade. Currency nor coin. Traffic nor toil. I believe in nothing but the absolute freedom of every living being. Freedom! freedom from the curse of creeds, the blight of bigotry, and the leprosy of the law. Freedom to go and to come, to live and to die. Life without loathing, love without bondage. To live in some sunlit valley, where the bud is ever bursting into flower, the flower fading to fruit, and the fruit ripening to sustenance. The untouched bosom of Nature would yield enough for her children had not the curse of greed been implanted in their bosoms."
Goetze had turned away from the window and was again striding up and down the floor in the dark.
"A beautiful poem, Julian," said the other, dreamily; "but a sort of delightful barbarism, I'm afraid."
"Barbarism? No! A higher, purer intellectuality than we have ever yet known a civilization that knows not the curse of avarice nor the miseries of crime the weariness of wealth nor the pangs of poverty. The garden of Eden is still about us, but we have torn up the flowers, and desecrated it with the lust of gain. Man was never driven out of that garden. Greed was planted in his heart and he destroyed it."
"Come," he continued, suddenly changing the subject, "I have made you tired and hungry; let us go out, somewhere, to supper."
"Thanks," said the other, laughing; "I supposed a man in your condition had no need of bodily
sustenance. You are comfortably situated here, Julian," he added, as they passed out into the street.
"Yes, it is quiet here no bother with servants nor landladies. Once a week my washerwoman comes and stays to put my establishment in order; the rest of the time I am disturbed only by my sitters."
"You forget me ."
"Yes, Harry," said the artist, taking his arm affectionately; "and by you, of course."
IV
"Men are all scoundrels," he said, savagely; "I wonder if there are really any who are not so at heart."
He rapidly formulated his plan of action, and even the sentences with which he was to meet and conquer this modern Circe.
"I will keep Eva's face before me," he thought, "and I will treat her coldly. She is high-spirited and keen; she will notice the change at once and resent it. She is too proud to demand an explanation."
He felt himself equal to the ordeal. He was anxious now for her to come that it might be safely passed. As the hours went by he grew impatient; he placed her portrait on the easel and fancied the original was before him. He went through an imaginary dialogue with it in which he was wholly victorious. He no longer felt any emotion for this woman.
"I will begin a new life," he said, as he strode rapidly up and down the room; "a new life." But there was a feverishness in his voice that did not bode well for his resolution.
"I wish she would come," he muttered, fretfully.
His cheeks were hot and flushed, and his hands were like ice, and trembling. And the result was that he failed failed miserably and completely. When, an hour later, Evelin March entered the studio and, throwing off her wrap, stood before him, imperious, soulless and beautiful a delicate odor, as of pansies, from her white flesh, stealing into his brain his pledges of faith and his fair resolves melted away like walls of mist, and the face of Eva Delorme shrank back into the silent recesses of his heart, and only a small voice within him whispered, "Coward traitor "
She glanced at him sharply.