It was in the days when nothing physical tainted her passionate
attachment to Clive. When she was with him she enjoyed the moment with
all her heart and soul--gave to it and to him everything that was best
in her--all the richness of her mental and bodily vigour, all the
unspoiled enthusiasm of her years, all the sturdy freshness of youth,
eager, receptive, credulous, unsatiated.
With them, once more, the old happy companionship began; the Cafe
Arabesque, the Regina, the theatres, the suburban restaurants knew
them again. Familiar faces among the waiters welcomed them to the same
tables; the same ushers guided them through familiar aisles; the same
taxi drivers touched their caps with the same alacrity; the same
porters bestirred themselves for tips.
Sometimes when they were not alone, they and their friends danced late
at Castle House or the Sans-Souci, or the Humming-Bird, or some such
resort, at that time in vogue.
Sometimes on Saturday afternoons or on Sundays and holidays they spent
hours in the museums and libraries--not that Clive had either
inherited or been educated to any truer appreciation of things worth
while than the average New York man--but like the majority he admitted
the solemnity and fearsomeness of art and letters, and his attitude
toward them was as carefully respectful as it was in church.
Which first perplexed and then amused Athalie who, with no
opportunities, had been born with a wholesome passion for all things
beautiful of the mind.
The little she knew she had learned from books or from her
companionship with Captain Dane that first summer after Clive had gone
abroad. And there was nothing orthodox, nothing pedantic, nothing
simulated or artificial in her likes or dislikes, her preferences or
her indifference.
Yet, somehow, even without knowing, the girl instinctively gravitated
toward all things good.
In modern art--with the exception of a few painters--she found little
to attract her; but the magnificence of the great Venetians, the
sombre splendour of the great Spaniards, the nobility of the great
English and Dutch masters held her with a spell forever new. And, as
for the exquisite, naively self-conscious works of Greuze, Lancret,
Fragonard, Boucher, Watteau, and Nattier, she adored them with all the
fresh and natural appetite of a capacity for visual pleasure unjaded.
He recognised Raphael with respect and pleasure when authority
reassured him it was Raphael. Also he probably knew more about the
history of art than did she. Otherwise it was Athalie who led,
instinctively, toward what gallery and library held as their best.
Her favourite lingering places were amid the immortal Chinese
porcelains and the masterpieces of the Renaissance. And thither she
frequently beguiled Clive,--not that he required any persuading to
follow this young and lovely creature who ranged the full boundaries
of her environment, living to the full life as it had been allotted
her.