"I hope that you are coming to Boston some day," he said to her on this
occasion, the occasion of the blue border. "I'd like so much to show you my
studio there, and my work. I'm not such an idler as you might imagine."

Mrs. Upton replied that she should never for a moment imagine him an idler
and that since she was going to Boston to stay with his great-aunt, a dear
but too infrequently seen friend of hers, she hoped soon for the pleasure
of seeing his work. "I hear that you are very talented," she added.

Jack, who considered that he was, did not protest with a false modesty,
but went on to talk of the field of art in general, and questioning her,
skeptical as to her statement that her artistic tastes were a mere medley,
he put together by degrees a conception of vague dislikes and sharp
preferences. But, in spite of his persistence in keeping her to Chardin and
Japanese prints, she would pass on from herself to Imogen, emphasizing her
satisfaction in Imogen's great interest in art. "It's such a delightful
bond between people," And Mrs. Upton, with her more than American parental
discretion, smiled her approval of such bonds.

Jack reflected some moments before saying that Imogen knew, perhaps, more
than she cared. He didn't think that Imogen had, exactly, the esthetic
temperament. And that there was no confidential flavor in these remarks he
demonstrated by adding that it was a point he and Imogen often discussed;
he had often told her that she should try to feel more and to think less,
so that Valerie might amusedly have recalled Imogen's explanation to her
of the fundamental frankness that made lovers in America such "remarkable
young men." Jack's frankness, evidently, would be restrained by neither
diffidence nor affection. She received his diagnosis of her daughter's case
without comment, saying only, after a moment, while she turned a corner of