“Oh yes, and here is Mrs. Cowperwood,” she commented, turning to the painting by Van Beers. “It’s high in key, isn’t it?” she said, loftily, but with an innocent loftiness that appealed to him. He liked spirit and some presumption in a woman. “What brilliant colors! I like the idea of the garden and the clouds.” She stepped back, and Cowperwood, interested only in her, surveyed the line of her back and the profile of her face. Such co-ordinated perfection of line and color! “Where every motion weaves and sings,” he might have commented. Instead he said: “That was in Brussels. The clouds were an afterthought, and that vase on the wall, too.” “It’s very good, I think,” commented Mrs. Sohlberg, and moved away. “How do you like this Israels?” he asked. It was the painting called “The Frugal Meal.” “I like it,” she said, “and also your Bastien Le-Page,” referring to “The Forge.” “But I think your old masters are much more interesting. If you get many more you ought to put them together in a room. Don’t you think so? I don’t care for your Gerome very much.” She had a cute drawl which he considered infinitely alluring. “Why not?” asked Cowperwood. “Oh, it’s rather artificial; don’t you think so? I like the color, but the women’s bodies are too perfect, I should say. It’s very pretty, though.” He had little faith in the ability of women aside from their value as objects of art; and yet now and then, as in this instance, they revealed a sweet insight which sharpened his own. Aileen, he reflected, would not be capable of making a remark such as this. She was not as beautiful now as this woman—not as alluringly simple, naive, delicious, nor yet as wise. Mrs. Sohlberg, he reflected shrewdly, had a kind of fool for a husband. Would she take an interest in him, Frank Cowperwood? Would a woman like this surrender on any basis outside of divorce and marriage? He wondered. On her part, Mrs. Sohlberg was thinking what a forceful man Cowperwood was, and how close he had stayed by her. She felt his interest, for she had often seen these symptoms in other men and knew what they meant. She knew the pull of her own beauty, and, while she heightened it as artfully as she dared, yet she kept aloof, too, feeling that she had never met any one as yet for whom it was worth while to be different. But Cowperwood—he needed someone more soulful than Aileen, she thought. CHAPTER XV. A New Affection