Chains : $b lesser novels and storiesDreiser, Theodore
General
Chains : $b lesser novels and stories
Dreiser, Theodore
American fiction -- 20th century; Short stories, American
And in him, too, was no impatience with life for anything it might
have failed to provide. Instead, he seemed ever to be thinking of its
beauties and harmonies, the wonder of its dawns and sunsets, the colors
and harmonies of its streets, buildings, crowds, silences. Often of a
morning when it was yet dark he would arise and open a door that gave
out onto a balcony and from there gaze upon the sky and city. And at
any time it was always an instinct with him to pause before anything
that appealed to either of them as beautiful or interesting. And in
his eye was never the estimating glint of one who seeks to capture for
profit that which is elemental and hence evanescent, but only the gaze
of the lover of beauty, the worshiper of that which is profitable to
the soul only.
_The very street! The very studio!_
Although she was ignorant of the spirit or the technique of art she
had been able to comprehend it and him, all that he represented as a
portion of beauty itself, the vast and supernal beauty toward which
the creative forces of life in their harsh and yet tender ways seem
impelled at times.
Had she not understood very well that it was as beauty that she
appealed to him, at first anyhow, an artistry of face and form plus a
certain mood of appreciation or adoration or understanding which was
of value to him? How often had he spoken of her lavender-lidded eyes,
the whiteness and roundness of her arms, the dark gold of her hair,
the sombre unrevealing blue of the iris of her eyes! Here strange it
was that these seemed to enthrall and hold him at times, leaving him,
if not weak, at least childlike in her hands. He had never seemed to
weary of her and during all their days together she could feel his
unreasoning joy in her.
_His one-time yellow curtains exchanged for green ones!_
That she had proved and remained irresistible to him was evidenced by
his welcoming and gratified eyes, the manner in which he paused to
survey her whenever she came near, seeming to re-estimate her every
least attribute with loving interest. Indeed, he seemed to need her as
much as she needed him, to yearn with an intense hunger over her as a
thing of beauty,—he who to her was strength, beauty, ideals, power, all
the substance of beauty and delight that she could crave.
_Yes, here was where they had come to gaze at the towers of the bridge
beyond._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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