Page:The King in Yellow (1895).djvu/71

Rh “Destroyed, preserved, how can we tell?”

We sat in the corner of a studio near his unfinished group of “The Fates.” He leaned back on the sofa, twirling a sculptor’s chisel and squinting at his work.

“By the way,” he said, “I have finished pointing up that old academic Ariadne and I suppose it will have to go to the Salon. It’s all I have ready this year, but after the success the ‘Madonna,’ brought me I feel ashamed to send a thing like that.”

The “Madonna,” an exquisite marble for which Geneviève had sat, had been the sensation of last year’s Salon. I looked at the Ariadne. It was a magnificent piece of technical work, but I agreed with Boris that the world would expect something better of him than that. Still it was impossible now to think of finishing in time for the Salon, that splendid terrible group half shrouded in the marble behind me. “The Fates” would have to wait.

We were proud of Boris Yvain. We claimed him and he claimed us on the strength of his having been born in America, although his father was French and his mother was a Russian. Every one in the Beaux Arts called him Boris. And yet there were only two of us whom he addressed in the same familiar way; Jack Scott and myself.

Perhaps my being in love with Geneviève had something to do with his affection for me. Not that it had ever been acknowledged between us. But after all was settled, and she had told me with tears in her eyes that it was Boris whom she loved, I went over to his house and congratulated him. The perfect cordiality of that interview did not deceive