Vera seemed quite mad about him. She took me one day to his studio, saying particularly that she had never been there. It was a small room at the top of a palsied fire trap near Gramercy Park, reached by many turnings through dark hallways with sudden steps up and down. In it, besides the sculptor in a gunny-sack smock, there was nothing but some planks laid over the tops of barrels, some heaps of clay, and his things, which he called pieces of form. On the walls, scrawled in pencil, were his social engagements, all with women. Vera’s name was there. Once he came to tea with nothing of his own to show, but from under his coat he produced and held solemnly aloft an object which proved to be a stuffed toy beast,--dog, cow, bear or what you couldn’t tell, it was so battered. One of its shoe-button eyes, one ear and the tail were gone. Its hide was cotton flannel, now the color of grimy hands. “What is it?” everybody asked. He wouldn’t tell until he had found something to stand it on. A book would serve. Then he held it out at arm’s length. “I found it on the East Side in a rag picker’s place!” he said. “I seem to see something in it ... what?... a force ... something elemental ... something.” The respect with which this twaddle was received by a sane company, some of it distinguished, even by Vera herself, filled me with indignation. Later the sculptor sat by me and asked ingratiatingly how matters were in Wall Street. “You are the third man who has asked me that question today,” I said. “Why are artists so much interested in Wall Street?” “I’m not,” he said. “I only thought it was a proper question to ask. Some of them are. I hear them talking about it. Pictures sell better when people are making money in Wall Street. Sculpture never sells anyway. Mine won’t.” I said men were doing very well in Wall Street. Times were prosperous again. “So I understand,” he replied. “It seems very easy to make money there if you get in right. Do you know of anything sure?” I said I didn’t. “You are with Mr. Galt?” he asked. “Yes.” “He is a great money maker, isn’t he? What is he like?” “He’s an elemental force,” I said, leaving him. ii But Vera was shrewd and purposeful, having always her ends in view. Manifestations such as the sculptor person were kept in their place. They were not permitted to dominate the scene. They played against a background that was at once exquisite and reassuring. In a mysterious way she created an atmosphere of pagan, metaphysical tranquillity, which rejects nothing and refines whatever it accepts. No thought, no representation of fact or experience, however extreme, was forbidden. But you must perceive all things æsthetically. Vulgarity was the only sin. Emotions were objects. You might enjoy them in any way you liked save one. You must not touch them. For this was the higher sensuality, ethereal and philosophical,--a sensuality of the mind alone.