But there is something supererogatory in believing in a man obviously disposed to perform that service for himself; and Claudia’s ardor gradually spent itself against the dense surface of her husband’s complacency. She could smile now at her vision of an intellectual communion which should admit her to the inmost precincts of his inspiration. She had learned that the creative processes are seldom self-explanatory, and Keniston’s inarticulateness no longer discouraged her; but she could not reconcile her sense of the continuity of all high effort to his unperturbed air of finishing each picture as though he had despatched a masterpiece to posterity. In the first recoil from her disillusionment she even allowed herself to perceive that, if he worked slowly, it was not because he mistrusted his powers of expression, but because he had really so little to express. “It’s for Europe,” Mrs. Davant vaguely repeated; and Claudia noticed that she was blushingly intent on tracing with the tip of her elaborate sunshade the pattern of the shabby carpet. “It will be a revelation to them,” she went on provisionally, as though Claudia had missed her cue and left an awkward interval to fill. Claudia had in fact a sudden sense of deficient intuition. She felt that her visitor had something to communicate which required, on her own part, an intelligent co-operation; but what it was her insight failed to suggest. She was, in truth, a little tired of Mrs. Davant, who was Keniston’s latest worshipper, who ordered pictures recklessly, who paid for them regally in advance, and whose gallery was, figuratively speaking, crowded with the artist’s unpainted masterpieces. Claudia’s impatience was perhaps complicated by the uneasy sense that Mrs. Davant was too young, too rich, too inexperienced; that somehow she ought to be warned.--Warned of what? That some of the pictures might never be painted? Scarcely that, since Keniston, who was scrupulous in business transactions, might be trusted not to take any material advantage of such evidence of faith. Claudia’s impulse remained undefined. She merely felt that she would have liked to help Mrs. Davant, and that she did not know how. “You’ll be there to see them?” she asked, as her visitor lingered. “In Paris?” Mrs. Davant’s blush deepened. “We must all be there together.” Claudia smiled. “My husband and I mean to go abroad some day--but I don’t see any chance of it at present.”