hout life. Were
there such women? Why did artists paint them? Yet the little Christ was
sweet. Art bored Aileen unless others were enthusiastic. She craved
only the fanfare of the living--not painted resemblances. She returned
to the music-room, to the court of orchids, and was just about to go
up-stairs to prepare herself a drink and read a novel when Cowperwood
observed:

"You're bored, aren't you?"

"Oh no; I'm used to lonely evenings," she replied, quietly and without
any attempt at sarcasm.

Relentless as he was in hewing life to his theory--hammering substance
to the form of his thought--yet he was tender, too, in the manner of a
rainbow dancing over an abyss. For the moment he wanted to say, "Poor
girlie, you do have a hard time, don't you, with me?" but he reflected
instantly how such a remark would be received. He meditated, holding
his book in his hand above his knee, looking at the purling water that
flowed and flowed in sprinkling showers over the sportive marble
figures of mermaids, a Triton, and nymphs astride of fishes.

"You're really not happy in this state, any more, are you?" he
inquired. "Would you feel any more comfortable if I stayed away
entirely?"

His mind had turned of a sudden to the one problem that was fretting
him and to the opportunities of this hour.

"You would," she replied, for her boredom merely concealed her
unhappiness in no longer being able to command in the least his
interest or his sentiment.

"Why do you say that in just that way?" he asked.

"Because I know you would. I know why you ask. You know well enough
that it isn't anything I want to do that is concerned. It's what you
want to do. You'd like to turn me off like an old horse now that you
are tired of me, and so you ask whether I would feel any more
comfortable. What a liar you are, Frank! How really shifty you are! I
don't wonder you're a multimillionaire. If you could live long enough
you would eat up the whole world. Don't you think for one moment that
I don't know of Berenice Fleming here in New York, and how you're
dancing attendance on her--because I do. I know how you have been
hanging about her for months and months--ever since we have been here,
and for long before. You think she's wonderful now because she's young
and in society. I've seen you in the Waldorf and in the Park hanging on
her every word, looking at her with adoring eyes. What a fool you are,
to be so big a man! Every little