Part 14 (2/2)

”We will do my way to-morrow, and your way to-day,” he said.

”All right. I promise to enjoy your way if you will promise to enjoy mine, not just endure it scornfully.”

”You must think I'm a boor.”

”No. But I think that until you learn that an artist cannot afford to scorn any phase of life that is human, you will never do great work.”

He looked at her keenly.

”Fifth Avenue isn't human. It's an imitation,” he objected.

”You're very young, Jarvis,” she commented.

”Upon my soul,” he laughed, so spontaneously that an old fogy at the next table said audibly to his waitress, ”Bride and groom,” and for some reason Bambi resented it with a flare of colour.

”It's true,” she continued; ”until you realize that Fifth Avenue and the Bowery are as inevitable as the two ends of the teeter-totter, you won't see the picture true.”

”Sometimes you show a most surprising poise,” he granted her. ”But of course you are not the stuff of which creative artists are made.”

She chuckled, and patted her bag where the bill fold lay, with its crisp hundreds due to some imitation of creative impulse.

”Just where, and in what, am I lacking?” she asked, most humbly.

”A creative artist would not care a fig for truth. He creates an impression of truth out of a lie if necessary.”

”But I am in the direct line from Ananias,” she protested. ”I inherit creative talent of that brand.”

So they laughed and chattered, in the first real companions.h.i.+p they had ever known.

True to the plan, they ascended the stage at Eighteenth Street, Bambi in a flutter of happiness. As the panorama of that most fascinating highway unrolled before them, she constantly touched this and that and the other object with the wand of her vivid imagination. Jarvis watched her with amused astonishment, for the first time really thoroughly aware of her.

Again he noticed that wherever she was she was a lodestone for all eyes.

He decided that it was not beauty, in the strictest sense of the word, but a sort of radiance which emanated from her like an aura.

Twenty-third Street cut across their path with its teeming throngs.

Madison Square lay smiling in the suns.h.i.+ne like a happy courtesan, with no hint of its real use as Wayside Inn for all the old, the poor, the derelict, whose tired feet could find refuge there. The vista of the avenue lay ahead.

”It's like a necklace of sparkling pearls,” Bambi said, with incessant craning of her neck. ”I feel like standing up and singing 'The Song of the Bazaars.' There isn't a stuff, nor a silk, nor a gem from Araby to Samarkand that isn't here.”

”It bewitches you, doesn't it?” Jarvis commented.

”Think of the wonder of it! Camel trains, and caravans, merchant s.h.i.+ps on all the seas, trains, and electric trucks, all bringing the booty of the world to this great, s.h.i.+ning bazaar for you and me. It's thrilling.”

”So it is,” he agreed. ”I hope you mark the proportion of shops for men--dresses, hats, jewels, furs, motor clothes, tea rooms, candy shops, corsetieres, florists, bootmakers, all for women. Motor cars are full of women. Are there no men in this menagerie?”

”No. They are all cliff-dwellers downtown. They probably wear loin cloths of a fas.h.i.+onable cut,” she laughed back at him.

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