even for a moment take my thoughts away. At this
moment she is probably suffering untold pangs because she thinks I am
regretting the days in which she was not in my life."

"And because she could not understand your art, she hated it," said
Herkimer, with a growing anger.

"No, it wasn't that. It was something more subtle, more instinctive,
more impossible to combat," said Rantoul, shaking his head. "Do you know
what is the great essential to the artist--to whoever creates? The
sense of privacy, the power to isolate his own genius from everything in
the world, to be absolutely concentrated. To create we must be alone,
have strange, unuttered thoughts, just as in the realms of the soul
every human being must have moments of complete isolation--thoughts,
reveries, moods, that cannot be shared with even those we love best. You
don't understand that."

"Yes, I do."

"At the bottom we human beings come and depart absolutely alone.
Friendship, love, all that we instinctively seek to rid ourselves of,
this awful solitude of the soul, avail nothing. Well, what others shrink
from, the artist must seek."

"But you could not make her understand that?"

"I was dealing with a child," said Rantoul. "I loved that child, and I
could not bear even to see a frown of unhappiness cloud her face. Then
she adored me. What can be answered to that?"

"That's true."

"At first it was not so difficult. We passed around the world--Greece,
India, Japan. She came and sat by my side when I took my easel; every
stroke of my brush seemed like a miracle. A hundred times she would cry
out her delight. Naturally that amused me. From time to time I would
suspend the sittings and reward my patient little audience--"

"And the sketches?"

"They were not what I wanted," said Rantoul with a little laugh; "but
they were not bad. When I returned here and opened my studio, it began
to be difficult. She could not understand that I wanted to work eighteen
hours a day. She begged for my afternoons. I gave in. She embraced me
frantically and said; 'Oh, how good you are! Now I won't be jealous any
more, and every morning I will come with you and inspire you.'"

"Every morning," said Herkimer, softly.

"Yes," said Rantoul, with a little hesitation, "every morning. She
fluttered about the studio like a pink-and-white butterfly, sending me a
kiss from her dainty fingers whenever I looked her way. She watched over
my shoulder every stroke, and when I did