Part 16 (1/2)
”Shall I lure the children away?” asked Riviere as he raised his soft felt hat.
”Thanks--it would be a relief,” answered Elaine, but with a coldness in her greeting that struck him as curious.
A few coppers scattered the children; the peasant slunk sullenly away.
His eye and Riviere's met, but there was no recognition on the part of the latter.
”Are you working this morning?” asked Elaine presently.
”No, I'm learning.” He nodded towards her sketch-book. ”May I continue the lesson?”
”Compliments are barred,” she replied stiffly. ”I neither give nor take them.”
Riviere groped mentally for the reason of this curious change of att.i.tude. Yesterday she had been frankly friendly; to-day she held herself distinctly aloof. Had he offended her in some way?
He continued soberly. ”I'm not paying insincere compliments. It isn't your sketch which interests me so much as your method of sketching. The directness of it. The way you get to the heart of the subject without worrying over detail. The incisiveness. I'm mentally applying your method to the problems of my own work.... To stand here and watch you sketching is pure selfishness on my part.”
”Like other men, you imagine that women can't get beyond detail.” A flush had come into her voice. ”All through the ages men have been learning from women and refusing to acknowledge it.”
”In which sphere?”
”In every sphere.”
”Particularize.”
”Take novel-writing. Men sneer at the woman-novelist--say that she cannot draw a man to the life.”
”It's largely true.”
”What's the reason? Because one can't draw to any satisfaction without models to base on. Because a man never lets a woman into his innermost thoughts.”
”That argument ought to cut both ways.”
”It doesn't. Women give up their innermost secrets to men because----Well, because woman is the s.e.x that gives and man the s.e.x that takes. It's been bred in and in through the whole history of civilization.”
”Woman the s.e.x that gives? That reverses the usual idea.”
”You're thinking of the things that don't matter--money, jewels, dress, mansions, servants. Those are the cheap things that man gives in return for the gifts that are priceless.”
Riviere shook his head. ”You argue only from a limited knowledge of the world. There are plenty of women who take everything--_everything_--and give nothing in return. Perhaps you don't know such women. I do.”
”You mean women of the underworld? They are as men make them.”
”No, I'm thinking of _femmes du monde_. There are plenty of virtuous married women who are as grasping as the most soulless underworlder.
Probably you don't see them. You look at the world in a magic crystal that mirrors back your own thoughts and your own personality in different guises. You see a thousand YOU's, dressed up as other people.”
Elaine had become very thoughtful. ”My magic crystal--yes.” she mused.
”But surely everyone has his or her crystal to look into.”