THE AMOURETTA LANDSCAPE AND OTHER STORIES The Amouretta Landscape And Other Stories By Adeline Adams [Illustration] Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge 1922 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ADELINE ADAMS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. CONTENTS THE AMOURETTA LANDSCAPE 1 BITS OF CLAY 45 THE YOUNG LADY IN BLUE 57 “C’EST UNE TAUPE” 96 THEIR APPOINTED ROUNDS 105 SPEAKING OF ANGELS 141 THE MARQUIS GOES DONKEY-RIDING 168 THE FACE CALLED FORGIVENESS 198 THE ARTIST’S BIRTHDAY 228 THE AMOURETTA LANDSCAPE I If you search from Greenwich Village to Lawrence Park, and then from Turtle Bay to Chelsea, you will not find in all New York a painter less spoiled by fame than Maurice Price. It was in his nature to know from the very first that the luckier you are, the kinder you can be. I do not regard it as a limitation that in what he does and in what he wears he scarcely satisfies the romantic ideal about artists and their ways. There is nothing wild in his attire, and he does not live more dangerously than other citizens must. Still, there is something about his type of good looks that sets him apart and gives him away. Those who see him for the first time, in profile, whether at the Follies or at a funeral of an Academician, sometimes think that if they knew the man, they would esteem him more than they would love him. That is because they have not yet met him in front view, and discovered the eager friendliness in his gray eyes, the sensitive, listening expression of his whole face; the look that says, “Tell me your joke in life, and I’ll tell mine.” His merry young wife had once declared that there were only two things that saved his head from an intolerable Greek goddishness. Maurice’s curiosity was roused, but the girl had kept him guessing until the end of the week, when she explained that one of the things was his right ear, the other, his left; both of them stuck out more than the classic law allowed; just as well, too; since, for her part, she had preferred to marry a man, not an archangel or a Greek coin. The man smiled, and kept on painting.