rance of the figure. The
light fell across the canvas, leading down to a slab of vivid purple
water in the far distance. There was nothing pretty or affected or
conventional about the painting: it was life caught and rendered with
the true boldness of actuality. Milly, gazing in fascination at the
creation of line and color and light, realized that here was the work of
a new man, totally unknown to her. Its maker was no youthful pupil,
stumbling at his set task. No dabbler, this one, no trivial illustrator
or petty drawing-room amuser, but a man who had found within himself
something long sought for. She shuddered and turned away. So that was
what it was to be an Artist! She understood, and she hated it,--Art and
all the tribe of artists big and little. In this strange woman, whom
chance had put in his way, he had seen what she had not noticed, and he
had projected what he saw. He was able to divine the soul of things
beneath their superficial appearance, and he was able, exultantly, to
project in material form that hidden meaning for others to see and
understand, if they would. And that was what an artist, a real artist,
was for.

Naturally Milly did not analyze closely her own troubled mind. Here was
plain evidence of her husband's being in which she no longer had the
smallest share. She had been slightly jealous, more than she would
admit, that other time at the beginning of the portrait because of
Jack's absorption in his subject and his work. Her egotism had been
wounded. But that was trifling compared with the present feeling. In
this completed creation she no more existed than the fly which rested
for a moment upon the painted canvas. His creation had nothing
whatsoever to do with her. And something deeper than egotism, far deeper
than jealousy, rose from the depths of her nature in antagonism--a
sex-antagonism to the whole affair. Her husband had a new mistress--not
necessarily the Russian woman, for that idea had not yet come to
her--but his Art. And he might follow this mistress whither she
beckoned,--to poverty, defeat, or victory,--unmindful of her and her
child, forgetting them like idle memories in the pursuit of his blind
purpose. It was a force inimical to her and antagonistic to all orderly
living, as the Hawaiian had said,--a demonic force which rises in the
midst of society to give the lie to all the pretences men make to
themselves and call "civilization."

Milly hated it, instinctively. Jack must