perhaps as genuine as her own; but it seemed to her less able to give an
account of itself. Some few of his appreciators doubtless measured him
by their own standards; but it was difficult not to feel that in the
Hillbridge circle, where rapture ran the highest, he was accepted on
what was at best but an indirect valuation; and now and then she had a
frightened doubt as to the independence of her own convictions. That
innate sense of relativity which even East Onondaigua had not been able to
check in Claudia Day had been fostered in Mrs. Keniston by the artistic
absolutism of Hillbridge, and she often wondered that her husband remained
so uncritical of the quality of admiration accorded him. Her husband's
uncritical attitude toward himself and his admirers had in fact been one of
the surprises of her marriage. That an artist should believe in his
potential powers seemed to her at once the incentive and the pledge of
excellence: she knew there was no future for a hesitating talent. What
perplexed her was Keniston's satisfaction in his achievement. She had
always imagined that the true artist must regard himself as the imperfect
vehicle of the cosmic emotion--that beneath every difficulty overcome a new
one lurked, the vision widening as the scope enlarged. To be initiated into
these creative struggles, to shed on the toiler's path the consolatory ray
of faith and encouragement, had seemed the chief privilege of her marriage.
But there is something supererogatory in believing in a man obviously
disposed to perform that service for himself; and Claudia's ardor gradually
spent itself against the dense surface of her husband's complacency. She
could smile now at her vision of an intellectual communion which should
admit her to the inmost precincts of his inspiration. She had learned
that the creative processes are seldom self-explanatory, and Keniston's
inarticulateness no longer discouraged her; but she could not reconcile
her sense of the continuity of all high effort to his unperturbed air
of finishing each picture as though he had despatched a masterpiece to
posterity. In the first recoil from her disillusionment she even allowed