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Talcott; she had never stayed Gregory was thankful for small mercies with the Belots; Tante, after all, had her own definite discriminations; she would not have placed Karen in the charge of Chantefoy's lady of the Luxembourg, however reputable her present position; but Gregory was uneasy lest Karen should disclose how simply she took Madame Belot's past.
"You did like my dear Belots," Karen said, as she and Gregory drove away. She had, since her marriage, grown in perception; Gregory would have found it difficult, now, to hide ironies and antipathies from her. Even retrospectively she saw things which at the time she had not seen, saw, for instance, that the idea of the Belots had not been alluring to him.
He realized, in this world of the Belots, the significance, the laboriousness, the high level of vitality, and he realized that to the Belots his own world was probably seen as a dull, half useful, half obstructive fact, significant mainly for its purchasing power. For its power of appreciation they had no respect at all.
He saw Madame Belot clasp Karen to her breast and the long line of little Belots swarm up to be kissed successively, Monsieur Belot, a short, stout, ruddy man, with outstanding grey hair and a square grey beard, watching the scene benignantly, his palette on his thumb. Madame Belot didn't any longer suggest Chantefoy's picture; she suggested nothing artistic and everything domestic.
Art, to most of them, was a thing accepted on authority, like the latest cut for sleeves or the latest fashion for dressing the hair. A few of them, like the Cornish Lavingtons, had never heard Madame Okraska; a great many of them had never heard of Belot. The Madame Okraskas and the Belots of the world were to them a queer, alien people, regarded with only a mild, derivative interest.
He reflected that once he had married her it would probably be easy to detach Karen from these most undesirable associates. He hoped that she would take to Betty. Betty would be an excellent antidote. "And you think your sister-in-law will want me?" said Karen, when he brought her from the Belots back to Betty. "She doesn't know me." "She must begin to know you as soon as possible.
He knew, too, that she would have considered dislike of the Belots as showing defect in him not in them, but cheerfully, if with a touch of her severity. She had an infinite tolerance for the defects and foibles of those she loved. He was glad to be able to reply with full sincerity: "Ils sont de braves gens et de bons artistes."
They had spent a month in Scotland and a month in Italy and two weeks in France, returning by way of Paris, where Gregory passed through the ordeal of the Belots.
"I have never had a great friend of my own. Friends, of course; the Lippheims and the Belots; and Strepoff; and you, of course, Mrs. Talcott; but never, really, a great friend quite of my own, for they are Tante's friends first and come through Tante. Of course you have come through Tante, too," said Karen, with evident satisfaction; "only not quite in the same way."
That beautiful nude in the Luxembourg by Chantefoy is of her long before she married, of course. She does not sit for the ensemble now, and indeed I fear it has lost all its beauty, for she is very fat. It would be nice to go to Paris on our wedding-tour and see the Belots," said Karen. Gregory made an evasive answer.
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