Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/91

 and upheaval in the world of painting, especially in Paris, where old masters, about whom he read up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, were being pushed off museum walls to make room for the new masters who created pure works of art unrelated to anything but themselves. As a result, Semy revised his opinion of Larsen and Henkel who up to Clem's advent he had thought of vaguely as artists. The admiration he had expressed for their infrequent literal landscapes now was couched in a tone of patronizing indulgence when he informed the two puzzled illustrators that nature should imitate art. Naturally, he didn't tell them Wilde had said that as they wouldn't know who Oscar was anyway; moreover he didn't precisely know what Oscar meant either.

While Clem usually didn't mind Semy's presence, today he wanted him out of 410. Tingling with anticipation, as if on the verge of discovering something new in painting to start him on the right track, he wanted none of Semy's flossy talk to kill his mood.

"Beat it, Semy, I've a model coming and don't want to be disturbed."

Semy's flat chin dropped and his eyes clouded as he pictured the possibilities of Clem's afternoon. Must be a woman he'd found somewhere. Old Tom, the Indian model, never had been a barrier. Being a painter had advantages over writing, at least in Congress. True enough, French writers frequented houses but French girls undoubtedly were different from the sluts at Mona's near the freightyards where he was treated so cavalierly as to make the sexes seem reversed. All they thought of was to get it over and be paid. You couldn't turn yourself off and on like a spigot. And you were scared of what you'd catch all the time. No use talking, money was the key. Look at Clem. Money to travel, rent himself a place like this to be alone with a model. Though why he should return to Congress, when he could live in Paris, New York, or Chicago, was a mystery. Catch me sticking around here when I get a chance to beat it.

He unwound completely and, standing, stretched.

"God, Semy, you're like a big cat!"

"That's me, a big tom," smirked Semy.

"Well," Clem said, thinking that the one thing Semy never gave the impression of was the sinewy virility of a prowling tom, suggesting rather the soft sterility of a fixed cat.

"Got to get back to the paper anyway. I'll just go up and wash Rh