Boyne Street until
I came to the Art Museum, where a loan exhibition was being held. I
entered, bought a catalogue, and presently found myself standing before
number 103, designated as a portrait of Mrs. Hambleton Durrett,--painted
in Paris the autumn before by a Polish artist then much in vogue,
Stanislaus Czesky. Nancy--was it Nancy?--was standing facing me, tall,
superb in the maturity of her beauty, with one hand resting on an antique
table, a smile upon her lips, a gentle mockery in her eyes as though
laughing at the world she adorned. With the smile and the
mockery--somehow significant, too, of an achieved inaccessibility--went
the sheen of her clinging gown and the glint of the heavy pearls drooping
from her high throat to her waist. These caught the eye, but failed at
length to hold it, for even as I looked the smile faded, the mockery
turned to wistfulness. So I thought, and looked again--to see the
wistfulness: the smile had gone, the pearls seemed heavier. Was it a
trick of the artist? had he seen what I saw, or thought I saw? or was it
that imagination which by now I might have learned to suspect and
distrust. Wild longings took possession of me, for the portrait had
seemed to emphasize at once how distant now she was from me, and yet how
near! I wanted to put that nearness to the test. Had she really changed?
did anyone really change? and had I not been a fool to accept the
presentment she had given me? I remembered those moments when our glances
had met as across barriers in flashes of understanding. After all, the
barriers were mere relics of the superstition of the past. What if I went
to her now? I felt that I needed her as I never had needed anyone in all
my life.... I was aroused by the sound of lowered voices beside me.

"That's Mrs. Hambleton Durrett," I heard a woman say. "Isn't she
beautiful?"

The note of envy struck me sharply--horribly. Without waiting to listen
to the comment of her companion I hurried out of the building into the
cold, white sunlight that threw into bold relief the mediocre houses of
the street. Here was everyday life, but the portrait had suggested that
which might have been--might be yet. What did I mean by this? I didn't
know, I didn't care to define it,--a renewal of her friendship, of our
intimacy. My being cried out for it, and in the world in which I lived we
took what we wanted--why not this? And yet for an instant I stood on the
sidewalk to discover that in new sit