ll her millions could not create for her. Any one less
versed than Susy in the shallow mysteries of her little world would have
seen in Violet Melrose a baleful enchantress, in Nat Fulmer her helpless
victim. Susy knew better. Violet, poor Violet, was not even that. The
insignificant Ellie Vanderlyn, with her brief trivial passions, her
artless mixture of amorous and social interests, was a woman with
a purpose, a creature who fulfilled herself; but Violet was only a
drifting interrogation.

And what of Fulmer? Mustering with new eyes his short sturdily-built
figure, his nondescript bearded face, and the eyes that dreamed and
wandered, and then suddenly sank into you like claws, Susy seemed to
have found the key to all his years of dogged toil, his indifference
to neglect, indifference to poverty, indifference to the needs of
his growing family.... Yes: for the first time she saw that he looked
commonplace enough to be a genius--was a genius, perhaps, even though
it was Violet Melrose who affirmed it! Susy looked steadily at Fulmer,
their eyes met, and he smiled at her faintly through his beard.

"Yes, I did discover him--I did," Mrs. Melrose was insisting, from the
depths of the black velvet divan in which she lay sunk like a wan Nereid
in a midnight sea. "You mustn't believe a word that Ursula Gillow tells
you about having pounced on his 'Spring Snow Storm' in a dark corner of
the American Artists' exhibition--skied, if you please! They skied him
less than a year ago! And naturally Ursula never in her life looked
higher than the first line at a picture-show. And now she actually
pretends... oh, for pity's sake don't say it doesn't matter, Fulmer!
Your saying that just encourages her, and makes people think she
did. When, in reality, any one who saw me at the exhibition on
varnishing-day.... Who? Well, Eddy Breckenridge, for instance. He was
in Egypt, you say? Perhaps he was! As if one could remember the people
about one, when suddenly one comes upon a great work of art, as St.
Paul did--didn't he?--and the scales fell from his eyes. Well... that's
exactly what happened to me that day... and Ursula, everybody knows, was
down at Roslyn at the time, and didn't come up for the opening of the
exhibition at all. And Fulmer sits there and laughs, and says it
doesn't matter, and that he'll paint another picture any day for me to
discover!"

Susy had rung the door-bell with a hand trembling with
eagerness--eagerness to be a