Youth and the Bright Medusa

e had been with some of her musical friends to lunch at Burton Ives’ studio, and she began telling Hedger about its splendours. He listened a moment and then t

see him. The boys tell me he’s awfully kind about givin

“What could I possibly get from Burton Ives? He’s almost

her and had begged her to sit for him. “You must adm

ho will do that sort of thing. I wouldn’t pai

f them, and I think

bowed s

n went on persuasively. “Why don’t you paint the kind of pictures people

aid Hedger brusquely

of it,” she said, biting her lip. “He has a Japanese

ive luxury in the world, and I am much more extravagant

oney and don’t? That you d

been done over and over. I’m painting

brought Mr. Ives down

Before he left I’d probably te

know very well there’s only o

scrub painter, who needs a helping hand from some fashionable studi

pected that the tidings of a prospective call from the great man would be received very differently, and had been thinking as she came home in the stage how, as with a mag

ir shirts open at the neck. He stopped for a drink in one of the sagging bar-rooms on the water front. He had never in his life been so deeply wounded; he did not know he could be so hurt. He had told this girl all his secrets. On the roof, in these warm, heavy summer nights, with her hands locked in hi

entimental. There was no explaining her. But in this passion that had seemed so fearless and so fated to be, his own position now looked to him ridiculous; a poor da

to France to see. To her they must seem his apology for not having horses and a valet, or merely the puerile boastfulness of a weak man. Yet if she slipped the bolt tonight and came through the doors and said, “Oh, weak man, I belong to you!” what could he do? That was the danger. He w

threw his things into a hold-all he had carried about the world with him,