but he practisedit furtively
While he pushed on in the wake of his luggage his thoughtsslipped back into the old groove. He had once or twice runacross the man whom Anna Summers had preferred to him, andsince he had met her again he had been exercising hisimagination on the picture of what her married life musthave been. Her husband had struck him as a characteristicspecimen of the kind of American as to whom one is not quiteclear whether he lives in Europe in order to cultivate anart, or cultivates an art as a pretext for living in Europe.
Mr. Leath’s art was water-colour painting, but he practisedit furtively, almost clandestinely, with the disdain of aman of the world for anything bordering on the professional,while he devoted himself more openly, and with religiousseriousness, to the collection of enamelled snuff-boxes. Hewas blond and well-dressed, with the physical distinctionthat comes from having a straight figure, a thin nose, andthe habit of looking slightly disgusted–as who should not,in a world where authentic snuff-boxes were growing dailyharder to find, and the market was flooded with flagrantforgeries?
Darrow had often wondered what possibilities of communionthere could have been between Mr. Leath and his wife. Nowhe concluded that there had probably been none. Mrs.
Leath’s words gave no hint of her husband’s having failed tojustify her choice; but her very reticence betrayed her.
She spoke of him with a kind of impersonal seriousness, asif he had been a character in a novel or a figure inhistory; and what she said sounded as though it had beenlearned by heart and slightly dulled by repetition. Thisfact immensely increased Darrow’s impression that hismeeting with her had annihilated the intervening years.
She, who was always so elusive and inaccessible, had grownsuddenly communicative and kind: had opened the doors of herpast, and tacitly left him to draw his own conclusions. Asa result, he had taken leave of her with the sense that hewas a being singled out and privileged, to whom she hadentrusted something precious to keep. It was her happinessin their meeting that she had given him, had frankly lefthim to do with as he willed; and the frankness of thegesture doubled the beauty of the gift.
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