Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/424

422 He turned and walked abruptly up and down. Teresa was silent, spreading her long fingers to the blaze of the fire.

"Always before," he went on, "I've had a feeling that there were any amount of things before me, in work, in life. It's still so—more than ever so—in my work. I'm at the beginning of something infernally interesting. If you've considered that thing I'm doing, you can see it. … But I don't care about work alone, if I can't live too … if I can't be happy or at peace …"

Still she was silent, and after a moment, standing before the picture but not looking at it, he said:

"Here I am then—thirty-three years old, with a family, not enough money to live on comfortably, with an idea of painting which it will take me years to work out, and which probably won't bring in any money for some time to come, if it ever does. I believe in it. I could work with more interest, more intensity than ever before, if the other conditions of my life were right. But I'm not sure that I can work in spite of them."

"What conditions?"

"Well, money. I feel I ought to be making some, but if I do that, I can't do anything else."

"As to money, give my plan a trial for a year. Let me see what I can do. I've ideas for some work too—some models for little things in silver that I'm sure will sell. And we are not so far