BRENT had an apartment in the rue de Rivoli, near the Hotel Meurice and high enough to command the whole Tuileries garden.
From his balcony he could see to the east the ancient courts of the Louvre, to the south the varied, harmonious facades of the Quay d'Orsay with the domes and spires of the Left Bank behind, to the west the Obelisque, the long broad reaches of the Champs Elysees with the Arc de Triomphe at the boundary of the horizon.On that balcony, with the tides of traffic far below, one had a sense of being at the heart of the world, past, present, and to come.Brent liked to feel at home wherever he was; it enabled him to go tranquilly to work within a few minutes after his arrival, no matter how far he had journeyed or how long he had been away.So he regarded it as an economy, an essential to good work, to keep up the house in New York, a villa in Petite Afrique, with the Mediterranean washing its garden wall, this apartment at Paris; and a telegram a week in advance would reserve him the same quarters in the quietest part of hotels at Luzerne, at St.Moritz and at Biarritz.
Susan admired, as he explained his scheme of life to her and Palmer when they visited his apartment.Always profound tranquillity in the midst of intense activity.He could shut his door and he as in a desert; he could open it, and the most interesting of the sensations created by the actions and reactions of the whole human race were straightway beating upon his senses.As she listened, she looked about, her eyes taking in impressions to be studied at leisure.These quarters of his in Paris were fundamentally different from those in New York, were the expression of a different side of his personality.It was plain that he loved them, that they came nearer to expressing his real--that is, his inmost--self.
"Though I work harder in Paris than in New York," he explained, "I have more leisure because it is all one kind of work--writing--at which I'm never interrupted.So I have time to make surroundings for myself.No one has time for surroundings in New York."She observed that of the scores of pictures on the walls, tables, shelves of the three rooms they were shown, every one was a face--faces of all nationalities, all ages, all conditions--faces happy and faces tragic, faces homely, faces beautiful, faces irradiating the fascination of those abnormal developments of character, good and bad, which give the composite countenance of the human race its distinction, as the characteristics themselves give it intensities of light and shade.She saw angels, beautiful and ugly, devils beautiful and ugly.
When she began to notice this peculiarity of those rooms, she was simply interested.What an amazing collection! How much time and thought it must have taken! How he must have searched--and what an instinct he had for finding the unusual, the significant! As she sat there and then strolled about and then sat again, her interest rose into a feverish excitement.
It was as if the ghosts of all these personalities, not one of them commonplace, were moving through the rooms, were pressing upon her.She understood why Brent had them there--that they were as necessary to him as cadavers and skeletons and physiological charts to an anatomist.But they oppressed, suffocated her; she went out on the balcony and watched the effects of the light from the setting sun upon and around the enormously magnified Arc.
"You don't like my rooms," said Brent.
"They fascinate me," replied she."But I'd have to get used to these friends of yours.You made their acquaintance one or a few at a time.It's very upsetting, being introduced to all at once."She felt Brent's gaze upon her--that unfathomable look which made her uneasy, yet was somehow satisfying, too.He said, after a while, "Palmer is to give me his photograph.Will you give me yours?" He was smiling."Both of you belong in my gallery.""Of course she will," said Palmer, coming out on the balcony and standing beside her."I want her to have some taken right away--in the evening dress she wore to the Opera last week.
And she must have her portrait painted."
"When we are settled," said Susan."I've no time for anything now but shopping."They had come to inspect the apartment above Brent's, and had decided to take it; Susan saw possibilities of making it over into the sort of environment of which she had dreamed.In novels the descriptions of interiors, which weary most readers, interested her more than story or characters.In her days of abject poverty she used these word paintings to construct for herself a room, suites of rooms, a whole house, to replace, when her physical eyes closed and her eyes of fancy opened wide, the squalid and nauseous cell to which poverty condemned her.In the streets she would sometimes pause before a shop window display of interior furnishings; a beautiful table or chair, a design in wall or floor covering had caught her eyes, had set her to dreaming--dreaming on and on--she in dingy skirt and leaky shoes.Now--the chance to realize her dreams had come.Palmer had got acquainted with some high-class sports, American, French and English, at an American bar in the rue Volney.He was spending his afternoons and some of his evenings with them--in the evenings winning large sums from them at cards at which he was now as lucky as at everything else.Palmer, pleased by Brent's manner toward Susan--formal politeness, indifference to sex--was glad to have him go about with her.Also Palmer was one of those men who not merely imagine they read human nature but actually can read it.He _knew_ he could trust Susan.And it had been his habit--as it is the habit of all successful men--to trust human beings, each one up to his capacity for resisting temptation to treachery.
