Let Schwankovsky think him the fool he pretended. It didn’t matter to him in the slightest. For Hugh had never, at any period in his life, and least of all at this minute, aspired to be considered “a man with taste” in any sense that Schwankovsky would credit. If he had married Joan she, like so many other American wives, would have had the responsibility for all that sort of thing. And for the past five years Hugh had come more and more to consider himself a business man with very little that was æsthetic in his make-up. He acknowledged to himself now that if to-day he should see “Noon” for the first time, there was a large likelihood that he would not even make a stab at coming to any opinion for himself as to whether it was good or bad. Certainly he would not be pierced to his soul by the white light—which, then, years ago, when he was young, had seemed to him to come from some esoteric birth of beauty behind the light itself. So he neither blamed Schwankovsky for his choking sputterings nor felt insulted. He had the grace to realize that five years ago he would even have been in sympathy with him. But although he did not really mind Schwankovsky’s rage at himself, some unhappiness was clawing at his inner consciousness, some psychic pain, unlocated. Was it Joan’s cool, smiling silence? Joan could and should be defending him against this hot-tempered friend of hers, he realized. If she began to, he would hush her up, of course; but she was not even starting.... But perhaps it wasn’t Joan. He didn’t think it _was_. Was it Ariel? That Ariel should be looking at him as she was now! Her hand lay on Schwankovsky’s mammoth arm, the fingers clutched and lost in his great fingers. That was a little sickening to Hugh. But it was her face, its expression, which actually stabbed. Had Schwankovsky succeeded in making Ariel believe what was, indeed, the truth—that Hugh had failed her father? And what did Joan expect him to do in reply to these taunts from her friend, anyway? And why didn’t Joan laugh out loud, instead of smiling that way? But it was Ariel who kept the drama melodramatic. She turned on Joan. “Why do you let your friends misunderstand each other so?” she cried. “Why don’t you stop being amused and set Mr. Schwankovsky straight about Hugh? Hugh liked ‘Noon’ the best of all the pictures Father had done when he was in Bermuda. And he _bought_ it. He named his own price, and _paid_ it. _One thousand dollars._ Hugh had four thousand dollars a year to spend then. Father knew that. And Father thought it splendid that a man would spend one fourth of his income on a picture. But no one goes after beauty for himself or wants it that way. It’s for his friends as much as himself. Hugh only put ‘Noon’ in the attic because it reminded him that he couldn’t share it or anything else that was real to him with you, Mrs. Nevin. No one wants to be reminded of things like that about any one he loves. Love is more important than art, isn’t it!”