A Fountain Sealed

gain in New York, and Mrs. Wake, returned from Europe, had been for some

Mary, helper and admirer, said to Jack that the way in which Imogen had gathered up her threads, allowing hardly one to snap, was too beautiful. These young people, like the minor characters in a play, met often in the drawing-room while Imogen was busy up-stairs or gone out upon some important errand. Just now, Miss Bocock's lectures having been set going,

ll this organization, getting people together for her committee, securing the theater," said Mary. "I

lial Antigone, leading Oedipus through the olive groves of Colonus. It's bitter, instead of that, to have to rig Mrs. Scott out as Cassandra; will you believe it, Mary, she insists on being C

s, you know," sai

hat I shall circumvent her. Her arms shall be fully d

ve poor Mrs. Scott. It's that that is so wonderful about Imogen. I really believe that she could make her give up the part, if she set herself to it; she might even tell her that her

o hope of persuading

again, Jack. The

erstand. When i

to spend the rest of the

u think of

enelaus. I only wish that Imogen had more influence over R

sn't really know Imogen. And then Rose is a chi

on, now that you see something

ind, Jack. She is workin

robe. She is addressing

re I used to misjudge her

ck

cing himself on the sofa, his legs stretche

r where she is deep; it's there that the queerness comes in. I feel it in her smile, the w

k?" Jack questioned; the phrase was one

't apply to her-I don't believe

uggested; voicing a dim suspicion that

u mean, exa

e laughed a little. "So yo

ainst my will, as it were. But that do

y n

e way you felt about it

lked it

t I want to know is just what you

entious pause. "How can

here?" she

ogen makes one re

en is everythi

y contrast,

d up at Mrs. Upton's portrait, "I can hardly believe that she has suf

felt herself a

t, Jack. His death should c

he only said, after a slight pause: "Perhaps that's another

nd, in a warmhearted, pagan sort of way, she is, I'm quite sure, one of the kindest of people. Her maid, when she went back to England the other day, cried dreadfully at leaving h

gone! How does she

l do, of course, with her wits and her hands, I sup

ad it given it up willingly, or had it been forced to relinquish it by the pressure of circumstance? Reme

ut Felkin in that particular, but his mind still dwelt on the picture of the crying child and

age to let her ke

" Imogen

Her maid, you know, w

course, very tactfully, so that I believe that she thinks that it was she who initiated the idea. Perhaps she had intended from the first to send her back; it was so obvious that a woman as poor as she is ought not to have a maid. All the s

hout her maid; yet something of the pathos of that image remained with him-the child deprived of its toy; something,

she had glided into it smoothly, unobtrusively-a silken shadow; when she was among them it was of that she made him think; and in her shadowed quietness, as of a tranquil mist

rsation, for the most part, was carried on by Imogen. Mrs. Wake, also

lashes,-how different they were from Imogen's, as different as dusk from daylight. And they were not really sad, not really sleepy, eyes; that was the surprise of them when, after the downcast mystery, they raised to one suddenly their penetrating intelligence. The poetry of their aspect was constantly contradicted by the prose of their glance. But she did more than turn her own poetry into prose, so he told himself; she turned other people's into prose, too. Her glance beca

uestions were quite disposed of for talk just because they were so firmly established for action? When he had reached this point of query, Jack felt rising within him that former sense of irritation on Imogen's behalf, and on his own. After all, youthful triteness and enthusiasm were preferable to indifference. In the stress of this irritation he felt, at moments, a shock of keen sympathy for the departed Mr. Upton, who had, no doubt, often felt that disconcerting mingling of interest and indifference weigh upon his dithyrambic ardors. He often felt very sorry for Mr. Upton as he looked at his widow. It was better to feel that than to feel sorry for her while he listened to Imogen. It did not do to realize too keenly, through Imogen's echo, what it must have been to listen to Mr. Upton for a lifetime. When, on rare occasions, he had Mrs. Upton to himself, his impulse always was to "draw her out," to extract from her what were her impressions of things in general and what her attitude toward life. She must really, by this time, have enough accepted him as one of themselves to feel his right to hear all sorts of impressions. He was used to talking things o

he drawing-room in her Surrey cottage, and very different from the drawing-rooms with which, as he had heard from Imogen, she was familiar in the capitals of Europe. Mrs. Upton was, to-day, crocheting a blue border as peacefully

ccasion, the occasion of the blue border. "I'd like so much to show you m

going to Boston to stay with his great-aunt, a dear but too infrequently seen friend of hers, sh

e medley, he put together by degrees a conception of vague dislikes and sharp preferences. But, in spite of his persistence in keeping her to Chardin and Japanese prints, she would pass on from herself to Imoge

nd Imogen often discussed; he had often told her that she should try to feel more and to think less, so that Valerie might amusedly have recalled Imogen's explanation to her of the fundamental frankness that made lovers in America such "remarkable young men." Jack's

I don't see the artist as a performing acrobat nor as an anarchist in ethics, either. I think that

ntent on her corner,

by discipline and by sacrifice. And it's essentially a social, not a selfish attainment; it widens our b

but she continued to look interested, so that, quite conscious of his didactic purpose and amused by all the t

have thought that art was m

see, one finds out that the eternal isn't cut up into sections, as it were-art here, ethics there-intellect yonder; one finds out that all that is eternal is bound u

hat very horrid people can be great artist

broke out. "You'll find a flaw in his art, if you

t, she certainly liked him. It was here that the slight bewilderment came in, to feel that he had been upholding some unmoral doctrine she would have smiled in just the

I suppose that it does all com

re," Jack answered irrelevantly. "I've heard that your cottage

dear litt

hly glazed surface of the Correggio. Mrs. Upton's glance followed his. "I don't think I ever cared, so seriously, about beauty," she said, smili

re you h

idn't mind so much as all that. I didn

to try to ha

een them. Mr. Upton had not minded the room at all, or had minded only in the sense that he made it a matter of conscience not to mind.

g more for beauty than for m

, now that he had, involuntarily, gone so far. "If you like Chardin, I'm sure

brows of mildly lifted inquiry

nd it's bad imitation; and, anyway, the origina

e must accept from her her lack of proper feeling, repeating, "I didn't like it, but, really, I never minded much." And h