n. It was a part of your force and of your
knowledge of life. You were not a sexless ascetic who preached a mere
neutral goodness. Does that shock you?"

He smiled in turn.

"I went away from here, as I once told you, full of a high resolution
not to trail the honour of my art--if I achieved art--in the dust. But
I have not only trailed my art--I trailed myself. In New York I became
contaminated,--the poison of the place, of the people with whom I came
in contact, got into my blood. Little by little I yielded--I wanted so
to succeed, to be able to confound those who had doubted and ridiculed
me! I wasn't content to wait to deny myself for the ideal. Success was
in the air. That was the poison, and I only began to realize it after it
was too late.

"Please don't think I am asking pity--I feel that you must know. From
the very first my success--which was really failure--began to come in
the wrong way. As my father's daughter I could not be obscure. I was
sought out, I was what was called picturesque, I suppose. The women
petted me, although some of them hated me, and I had a fascination for
a certain kind of men--the wrong kind. I began going to dinners, house
parties, to recognize, that advantages came that way.... It seemed quite
natural. It was what many others of my profession tried to do, and they
envied me my opportunities.

"I ought to say, in justice to myself, that I was not in the least
cynical about it. I believed I was clinging to the ideal of art, and
that all I wanted was a chance. And the people I went with had the same
characteristics, only intensified, as those I had known here. Of course
I was actually no better than the women who were striving frivolously
to get away from themselves, and the men who were fighting to get money.
Only I didn't know it.

"Well, my chance came at last. I had done several little things, when an
elderly man who is tremendously rich, whose name you would recognize if
I mentioned it, gave me an order. For weeks, nearly every day, he
came to my studio for tea, to talk over the plans. I was really
unsophisticated then--but I can see now--well, that the garden was a
secondary consideration.... And the fact that I did it for him gave me a
standing I should not otherwise have had.... Oh, it is sickening to look
back upon, to think what an idiot I was in how little I saw....

"That garden launched me, and I began to have more work than I could do.
I was conscientious about it t