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Updated: May 27, 2025
There was an awkward silence, which Claudia broke by saying, with a glance at her husband: "But if the exhibition is to remain open to-morrow, could we not meet you there? And perhaps you could send word to some of our friends." Mrs. Davant brightened like a child whose broken toy is glued together. "Oh, do make him!" she implored.
She could feel him counting the minutes till the visit was over, and as the door finally closed on the scene of her discomfiture she almost shared the hope with which she confidently credited him that they might never meet again. Mrs. Davant glanced reverentially about the studio. "I have always said," she murmured, "that they ought to be seen in Europe." Mrs.
She merely felt that she would have liked to help Mrs. Davant, and that she did not know how. "You'll be there to see them?" she asked, as her visitor lingered. "In Paris?" Mrs. Davant's blush deepened. "We must all be there together." Claudia smiled. "My husband and I mean to go abroad some day but I don't see any chance of it at present." "But he ought to go you ought both to go this summer!"
Davant, sweeping her at once into the central current of her grievance. Claudia looked from one to the other. "For not going to see you?" "For not going to see his pictures!" cried the other nobly. Claudia colored and Keniston shifted his position uneasily. "I can't make her understand," he said, turning to his wife. "I don't care about myself!" Mrs. Davant interjected.
He seemed extraordinarily ready to impart his discoveries; and Claudia felt that her ignorance served him as a convenient buffer against the terrific impact of new sensations. On the way home she asked when he meant to see Mrs. Davant. His answer surprised her. "Does she know we're here?" "Not unless you've sent her word," said Claudia, with a touch of harmless irony.
Davant was young, credulous and emotionally extravagant: she reminded Claudia of her earlier self the self that, ten years before, had first set an awestruck foot on that very threshold. "Not for his sake," Mrs. Davant continued, "but for Europe's." Claudia smiled. She was glad that her husband's pictures were to be exhibited in Paris. She concurred in Mrs.
In the first recoil from her disillusionment she even allowed herself to perceive that, if he worked slowly, it was not because he mistrusted his powers of expression, but because he had really so little to express. "It's for Europe," Mrs. Davant vaguely repeated; and Claudia noticed that she was blushingly intent on tracing with the tip of her elaborate sunshade the pattern of the shabby carpet.
Davant was too young, too rich, too inexperienced; that somehow she ought to be warned. Warned of what? That some of the pictures might never be painted? Scarcely that, since Keniston, who was scrupulous in business transactions, might be trusted not to take any material advantage of such evidence of faith. Claudia's impulse remained undefined.
"Oh, hang Professor Wildmarsh!" said Keniston, softening the commination with a smile. "If my pictures are good for anything they oughtn't to need explaining." Mrs. Davant stared. "But I thought that was what made them so interesting!" she exclaimed. Keniston looked down. "Perhaps it was," he murmured.
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