“Suppose I were what you think me?  What right have you to object to my pleasures?  Have you—­in all your life of idle, vicious, luxury—­have you ever feared to do evil if it appealed to your bestial nature?  You know you have not.  You have feared only the appearance of evil.  To be as evil as you like so long as you can avoid the appearance of evil; that’s the game you have taught me to play.  That’s the game we have played together.  That’s the game we and our kind insist the artists and writers shall help us play.  That’s the only game I know, and, by the rule of our game, so long as the world sees nothing, I shall do what pleases me.

“You have had your day with me.  You have had what you paid for.  What right have you to deny me, now, an hour’s forgetfulness?  When I think of what I might have been, but for you, I wonder that I have cared to live, and I would not—­except for the poor sport of torturing you.

“You scoff at Mr. King’s portrait of me because he has not painted me as I am!  What would you have said if he had painted me as I am?  What would you say if Conrad Lagrange should write the truth about us and our kind, for his millions of readers?  You sneer at me because I cannot uncover my shoulders in the conventional dress of my class, and so make a virtue of a necessity and deceive the world by a pretense of modesty.  Go look in your mirror, you fool!  Your right to sneer at me for my poor little pretense is denied you by every line of your repulsive countenance Now get out.  I’m going to retire.”

And she rang for her maid.

Chapter XII

First Fruits of His Shame

When the postman, in his little cart, stopped at the home of Aaron King and his friend, that day, it was Conrad Lagrange who received the mail.  The artist was in his studio, and the novelist, knowing that the painter was not at work, went to him there with a letter.

The portrait—­still on the easel—­was hidden by the velvet curtain.  Sitting by a table that was littered with a confusion of sketches, books and papers, the young man was re-tying a package of old letters that he had, evidently, just been reading.

As the novelist went to him, the artist said quietly,—­indicating the package in his hand,—­“From my mother.  She wrote them during the last year of my study abroad.”  When the other did not reply, he continued thoughtfully, “Do you know, Lagrange, since my acquaintance with you, I find many things in these old letters that—­at the time I received them—­I did not, at all, appreciate.  You seem to be helping me, somehow, to a better understanding of my mother’s spirit and mind.”  He smiled.

Presently, Conrad Lagrange, when he could trust himself to speak, said, “Your mother’s mind and spirit, Aaron, were too fine and rare to be fully appreciated or understood except by one trained in the school of life, itself.  When she wrote those letters, you were a student of mere craftsmanship.  She, herself no doubt, recognized that you would not fully comprehend the things she wrote; but she put them down, out of the very fullness of her intellectual and spiritual wealth—­trusting to your love to preserve the letters, and to the years to give you understanding.”