to canvas, standing before each in a musing ecstasy of contemplation that
no readjustment of view ever seemed to disturb. Her eye instinctively
joined his in its inspection; it was the one point where their natures
merged. Thank God, there, was no doubt about the pictures! She was what she
had always dreamed of being--the wife of a great artist. Keniston dropped
into an armchair and filled his pipe. "How should you like to go to
Europe?" he asked.

His wife looked up quickly. "When?"

"Now--this spring, I mean." He paused to light the pipe. "I should like to
be over there while these things are being exhibited."

Claudia was silent.

"Well?" he repeated after a moment.

"How can we afford it?" she asked.

Keniston had always scrupulously fulfilled his duty to the mother and
sister whom his marriage had dislodged; and Claudia, who had the atoning
temperament which seeks to pay for every happiness by making it a source
of fresh obligations, had from the outset accepted his ties with an
exaggerated devotion. Any disregard of such a claim would have vulgarized
her most delicate pleasures; and her husband's sensitiveness to it in great
measure extenuated the artistic obtuseness that often seemed to her like a
failure of the moral sense. His loyalty to the dull women who depended on
him was, after all, compounded of finer tissues than any mere sensibility
to ideal demands.