Part 12 (1/2)
”There is another kind of life, Iris, which you do not know. You must let me teach you. It is the life of Art. If you would only condescend to show the least curiosity about me, Iris, I would try to show you something of the Art life.”
”How can I show curiosity about you, Arnold? I feel none.”
”No; that is just the thing which shames me. I have felt the most lively curiosity about you, and I have asked you thousands of impertinent questions.”
”Not impertinent, Arnold. If you want to ask any more, pray do. I dare say you cannot understand my simple life.”
”And you ask me nothing at all about myself. It isn't fair, Iris.”
”Why should I? I know you already.”
”You know nothing at all about me.”
”Oh, yes, I know you very well indeed. I knew you before you came here. You showed me yourself in your letters. You are exactly like the portrait I drew of you. I never thought, for instance, that you were an old gentleman, as you thought me.” He laughed. It was a new thing to see Iris using, even gently, the dainty weapons of satire.
”But you do not know what I am, or what is my profession, or anything at all about me.”
”No; I do not care to know. All that is not part of yourself. It is outside you.”
”And because you thought you knew me from those letters, you suffer me to come here and be your disciple still? Yet you gave me back my letters?”
”That was because they were written to me under a wrong impression.”
”Will you have them back again?”
She shook her head.
”I know them all by heart,” she said simply.
There was not the slightest sign of coquetry or flattery in her voice, or in her eyes, which met his look with clear and steady gaze.
”I cannot ask you to read my portrait to me as you drew it from those pictures.”
”Why not?” She began to read him his portrait as readily as if she were stating the conclusion of a problem. ”I saw that you were young and full of generous thoughts; sometimes you were indignant with things as they are, but generally you laughed at them and accepted them. It is, it seems, the nature of your friends to laugh a great deal at things which they ought to remedy if they could; not laugh at them. I thought that you wanted some strong stimulus to work; anybody could see that you were a man of kindly nature and good-breeding. You were careful not to offend by anything that you wrote, and I was certain that you were a man of honor. I trusted you, Arnold, before I saw your face, because I knew your soul.”
”Trust me still, Iris,” he said in rather a husky voice.
”Of course I did not know, and never thought, what sort of a man you were to look at. Yet I ought to have known that you were handsome. I should have guessed that from the very tone of your letters. A hunchback or a cripple could not have written in so light-hearted a strain, and I should have discovered, if I had thought of such a thing, that you were very well satisfied with your personal appearance. Young men should always be that, at least, if only to give them confidence.”
”Oh, Iris--oh! Do you really think me conceited?”
”I did not say that. I only said that you were satisfied with yourself. That, I understand now, was clear, from many little natural touches in your letters.”
”What else did you learn?”
”Oh, a great deal--much more than I can tell you. I knew that you go into society, and I learned from you what society means; and though you tried to be sarcastic, I understood easily that you liked social pleasure.”
”Was I sarcastic?”
”Was it not sarcastic to tell me how the fine ladies, who affect so much enthusiasm for art, go to see the galleries on the private-view day, and are never seen in them again? Was it not sarcastic--”