Somebody coming--I must get to work. It's the old gentleman again. He looks bothered. Maybe my clothes are suspicious; and they are--for an artist. If my conscience would allow me to make a change, but that is out of the question. I wonder what he's making those passes in the air for, with his hands. I seem to be the object of them. Can he be trying to mesmerize me? I don't quite like it. There's something uncanny about it."
The colonel muttered to himself, "It has an effect on him, I can see it myself. That's enough for one time, I reckon. He's not very solid, yet, I suppose, and I might disintegrate him. I'll just put a sly question or two at him, now, and see if I can find out what his condition is, and where he's from."
He approached and said affably:
"Don't let me disturb you, Mr. Tracy; I only want to take a little glimpse of your work. Ah, that's fine--that's very fine indeed. You are doing it elegantly. My daughter will be charmed with this. May I sit down by you?"
"Oh, do; I shall be glad."
"It won't disturb you? I mean, won't dissipate your inspirations?"
Tracy laughed and said they were not ethereal enough to be very easily discommoded.
The colonel asked a number of cautious and well-considered questions-- questions which seemed pretty odd and flighty to Tracy--but the answers conveyed the information desired, apparently, for the colonel said to himself, with mixed pride and gratification:
"It's a good job as far as I've got, with it. He's solid. Solid and going to last, solid as the real thing."
"It's wonderful--wonderful. I believe I could--petrify him." After a little he asked, warily "Do you prefer being here, or--or there?"
"There? Where?"
"Why--er--where you've been?"
Tracy's thought flew to his boarding-house, and he answered with decision.
"Oh, here, much!"
The colonel was startled, and said to himself, "There's no uncertain ring about that. It indicates where he's been to, poor fellow. Well, I am satisfied, now. I'm glad I got him out."
He sat thinking, and thinking, and watching the brush go. At length he said to himself, "Yes, it certainly seems to account for the failure of my endeavors in poor Berkeley's case. He went in the other direction. Well, it's all right. He's better off."
Sally Sellers entered from the street, now, looking her divinest, and the artist was introduced to her. It was a violent case of mutual love at first sight, though neither party was entirely aware of the fact, perhaps. The Englishman made this irrelevant remark to himself, "Perhaps he is not insane, after all." Sally sat down, and showed an interest in Tracy's work which greatly pleased him, and a benevolent forgiveness of it which convinced him that the girl's nature was cast in a large mould. Sellers was anxious to report his discoveries to Hawkins; so he took his leave, saying that if the two "young devotees of the colored Muse" thought they could manage without him, he would go and look after his affairs. The artist said to himself, "I think he is a little eccentric, perhaps, but that is all." He reproached himself for having injuriously judged a man without giving him any fair chance to show what he really was.
Of course the stranger was very soon at his ease and chatting along comfortably. The average American girl possesses the valuable qualities of naturalness, honesty, and inoffensive straightforwardness; she is nearly barren of troublesome conventions and artificialities, consequently her presence and her ways are unembarrassing, and one is acquainted with her and on the pleasantest terms with her before he knows how it came about. This new acquaintanceship--friendship, indeed-- progressed swiftly; and the unusual swiftness of it, and the thoroughness of it are sufficiently evidenced and established by one noteworthy fact-- that within the first half hour both parties had ceased to be conscious of Tracy's clothes. Later this consciousness was re-awakened; it was then apparent to Gwendolen that she was almost reconciled to them, and it was apparent to Tracy that he wasn't.