consolation, could
not help being struck with the spiritual exaltation of her look. At sight
of her, the vague hope he had never quite relinquished, that they might
be something more than aesthetic friends, died in his heart. She wore
black, as she often did; but in spite of its fashion her dress received a
nun-like effect from the pensive absence of her face. "Decidedly,"
thought Beaton, "she is far gone in good works."

But he rose, all the same, to meet her on the old level, and he began at
once to talk to her of the subject he had been discussing with her aunt.
He said frankly that they both felt she had unjustifiably turned her back
upon possibilities which she ought not to neglect.

"You know very well," she answered, "that I couldn't do anything in that
way worth the time I should waste on it. Don't talk of it, please. I
suppose my aunt has been asking you to say this, but it's no use. I'm
sorry it's no use, she wishes it so much; but I'm not sorry otherwise.
You can find the pleasure at least of doing good work in it; but I
couldn't find anything in it but a barren amusement. Mr. Wetmore is
right; for me, it's like enjoying an opera, or a ball."

"That's one of Wetmore's phrases. He'd sacrifice anything to them."

She put aside the whole subject with a look. "You were not at Mr.
Dryfoos's the other day. Have you seen them, any of them, lately?"

"I haven't been there for some time, no," said Beaton, evasively. But he
thought if he was to get on to anything, he had better be candid. "Mr.
Dryfoos was at my studio this morning. He's got a queer notion. He wants
me to paint his son's portrait."

She started. "And will you--"

"No, I couldn't do such a thing. It isn't in my way. I told him so. His
son had a beautiful face an antique profile; a sort of early Christian
type; but I'm too much of a pagan for that sort of thing."

"Yes."

"Yes," Beaton continued, not quite liking her assent after he had invited
it. He had his pride in being a pagan, a Greek, but it failed him in her
presence, now; and he wished that she had protested he was none. "He was
a singular creature; a kind of survival; an exile in our time and place.
I don't know: we don't quite expect a saint to be rustic; but with all
his goodness Conrad Dryfoos was a country person. If he were not dying
for a cause you could imagine him milking." Beaton intended a contempt
that came from the bitterness of having himself once milked the family
cow.