Frostwinch responded.
She leaned back in her chair, a soft flush on her thin, high-bred face.
Her figure, in a beautiful gown of beryl plush embroidered with gold,
seemed artistically designed for the carved, high-backed chair in which
she sat, and both her companions were too appreciative to lose the
grace of the picture she made.
"I cannot see that it is bad," she went on. "Mr. Fenton has proved it
to me, and even Mr. Herman, who seems, so far as I have seen him, the
most charitable of men, when I asked him how he liked it, spoke with
positive loathing of it. I can't manage to make myself unhappy over it,
that's all. And I believe I am as appreciative as the average."
To Helen there was something at once fascinating and repellent in this
talk. She was attracted by Mrs. Frostwinch. The perfect breeding, the
grace, the polish of the woman, won upon her strongly, while yet the
subtile air of taking life conventionally, of lacking vital
earnestness, was utterly at variance with the sculptor's temperament
and methods of thought. She no sooner recognized this feeling than she
rebuked herself for shallowness and a want of charity, yet even so the
impression remained. To the artistic temperament, enthusiasm is the
only excuse for existence.
"I think Mrs. Fenton is right," she said. "The few form the correct
judgment, and the many adopt it in the end because it is based on
truth.
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