h him was only superficially
discredited: she ought for his own sake to send him a word of cheer. So
she repeatedly reasoned, but she as repeatedly delayed performance: if
her general plan had been to be as still as a mouse, an interview like
the interview at Ricks would be an odd contribution to that ideal.
Therefore with a confused preference of practice to theory she let the
days go by; she felt that nothing was so imperative as the gain of
precious time. She shouldn't be able to stay with her father forever,
but she might now reap the benefit of having married her sister.
Maggie's union had been built up round a small spare room. Concealed in
this apartment she might try to paint again, and abetted by the grateful
Maggie--for Maggie at least was grateful--she might try to dispose of
her work. She had not indeed struggled with a brush since her visit to
Waterbath, where the sight of the family splotches had put her immensely
on her guard. Poynton moreover had been an impossible place for
producing; no active art could flourish there but a Buddhistic
contemplation. It had stripped its mistress clean of all feeble
accomplishments; her hands were imbrued neither with ink nor with
water-color. Close to Fleda's present abode was the little shop of a man
who mounted and framed pictures and desolately dealt in artists'
materials. She sometimes paused before it to look at a couple of shy
experiments for which its dull window constituted publicity, small
studies placed there for sale and full of warning to a young lady
without fortune and without talent. Some such young lady had brought
them forth in sorrow; some such young lady, to see if they had been
snapped up, had passed and repassed as helplessly as she herself was
doing. They never had been, they never would be, snapped up; yet they
were quite above the actual attainment of some other young ladies. It
was a matter of discipline with Fleda to take an occasional lesson from
them; besides which, when she now quitted the house, she had to look for
reasons after she was out. The only place to find them was in the
shop-windows. They made her feel like a servant-girl taking her
"afternoon," but that didn't signify: perhaps some day she would
resemble such a person still more closely. This continued a fortnight,
at the end of which the feeling was suddenly dissipated. She had stopped
as usual in the presence of the little pictures; then, as she turned
away, she had found hersel