“Let me go on,” said Rantoul, stopping him.  He reached out absent-mindedly, and drank the second cup.  “Let me say now, Britt, for fear you’ll misunderstand, there has never been the slightest quarrel between my wife and me.  She loves me absolutely; nothing else in this world exists for her.  It has always been so; she cannot bear even to have me out of her sight.  I am very happy.  Only there is in such a love something of the tiger—­a fierce animal jealousy of every one and everything which could 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 something that pleased her, I felt her lips on my neck, behind my ear, and heard her say, ’That is your reward.’”