"I suppose I must have," I said. "But I won't let it break loose in that way again. I'll suppress it. It's--it's--this is rather an insulting thing to say to you, but it's a humiliating discovery to make that I have----"

Mrs. Ascher nodded.

"My husband always says that you Irish----"

"He's quite wrong," I said; "quite wrong about me at all events. I hate paradoxes. I'm a plain man. The only thing I really admire is common sense."

"I understand," she said. "I understand exactly what you feel."

She is a witch and very likely did understand. I did not.

"Now," she said. "Now, I can talk to you. Sit down, please."

She pulled over a low stool, the only seat in the room. I sat on it.

Mrs. Ascher stood, or rather drooped in front of me, leaning on one hand, which rested, palm down, on the table where Tim Gorman's image stood. I doubt whether Mrs. Ascher ever stands straight or is capable of any kind of stiffness. But even drooping, she had a distinct advantage over me. My stool was very low and my legs are long. If I ventured to lean forwards, my knees would have touched my chin, a position in which it is impossible for a man to a.s.sert himself.

"I am so very glad," she said, "that you like the little head."

I was not going to be caught again. One lapse into artistic fervour was enough for me. Even at the risk of offending Mrs. Ascher beyond forgiveness, I was determined to preserve my self-respect.

"I wish you wouldn't take my word for it's being good," I said. "Ask somebody who knows. The fact that I like it is a proof that it's bad, bad art, if it's a proof of anything. I never really admire anything good, can't bear, simply can't bear old masters, or"--I dimly recollected some witty essays by my brilliant fellow-countryman Mr.

George Moore--"I detest Corot. My favourite artist is Leader."

Mrs. Ascher smiled all the time I was speaking.

"I know quite well," she said, "that my work isn't good. But you saw what I meant by it. You can't deny it now, and you know that the boy is like that."

"I don't know anything of the sort. I don't know anything at all about him. The only time I ever came into touch with him he was helping his brother to persuade Mr. Ascher to go into a doubtful--well, to make money by what I'd call sharp practice."

"I don't think he was," said Mrs. Ascher. "The elder brother may have been doing what you say; but Tim wasn't."

"He was in the game," I said.

I spoke all the more obstinately because I knew that Tim was not in the game, I was determined not to be hysterical again.

"I've had that poor boy here day after day," said Mrs. Ascher, "and I really know him. He has the soul of an artist. He is a creator. He is one of humanity's mother natures. You know how it is with us. Something quickens in us. We travail and bring to the birth."

Mrs. Ascher evidently included herself among the mother natures. It seemed a pity that she had not gone about the business in the ordinary way. I think she would have been happier if she had. However, the head of Tim Gorman was something. She had produced it.

"That is art," she said dreamily, "conception, gestation, travail, birth. It does not matter whether the thing born is a poem, a picture, a statue, a sonata, a temple----"

"Or a cash register," I said.

The thing born might apparently be anything except an ordinary baby. The true artist does not think much of babies. They are bourgeois things.

"Or a cash register," she said. "It makes no difference. The man who creates, who brings into being, has only one desire, that his child, whatever it may be, shall live. If it is stifled, killed, a sword goes through his heart."

It seemed to me even then with Mrs. Ascher's eyes on me, that it was rather absurd to talk about a cash register living. I do not think that men have ever personified this machine. We talk of ships and engines by the names we give them and use personal p.r.o.nouns, generally feminine, when we speak of them. But did any one ever call a cash register "Minnie" or talk of it familiarly as "she"?

"He thinks," said Mrs. Ascher, "indeed he is sure--he says his brother told him----"

"I know," I said. "The machine isn't going to be put on the market at all. It is to be used simply as a threat to make other people pay what I should call blackmail."

"That must not be," said Mrs. Ascher.

Her voice was pitched a couple of tones higher than usual. I might almost say she shrieked.

"It must not be," she repeated, "must not. It is a crime, a vile act, the murder of a soul."

Cash registers have not got souls. I am as sure of that as I am of anything.

"That boy," she went on, "that pa.s.sionate, brave, pure boy, he must not be dragged down, defiled. His soul----"

It was Tim Gorman's soul then, not the cash registers, which she was worrying about. Having seen her presentation of the boy's head, having it at that moment before my eyes, I understood what she meant. But I was not going to let myself be swept again into the regions of artistic pa.s.sion to please Mrs. Ascher.

"Well," I said, "it does seem rather a shady way of making money. But after all----"

I have mentioned that Mrs. Ascher never stands upright. She went very near it when I mentioned money.

She threw her head back, flung both her arms out wide, clenched her fists tightly, and, if the expression is possible, drooped backwards from her hips. A slightly soiled light-blue overall is not the garment best suited to set off the airs and att.i.tudes of high tragedy. But Mrs.

Ascher's feelings were strong enough to transfigure even her clothes.

"Money!" she said. "Oh, Money! Is there nothing else? Do you care for, hope for, see nothing else in the world? What does it matter whether you make money or not, or how you make it?"

It is only those who are very rich indeed or those who are on the outer fringe of extreme poverty who can despise money in this whole-hearted way. The wife of a millionaire--the millionaire himself probably attaches some value to money because he has to get it--and the regular tramp can say "Oh, money? Is there nothing else?" The rest of us find money a useful thing and get what we can of it.

Mrs. Ascher let her arms fall suddenly to her sides, folded herself up and sat down, or rather crouched, on the floor. From that position she looked up at me with the greatest possible intensity of eye.

"I know what you're thinking," she said. "You're thinking of my husband.

But he hates money just as much as I do. All he wants to escape, to have done with it, to live peaceably with me, somewhere far away, far, far away from everywhere."

Her eyes softened as she spoke. They even filled with water, tears, I suppose. But she seemed to me to be talking nonsense. Ascher was making money, piling it up. He could stop if he liked. So I thought. So any sensible man must think. And as for living somewhere far, far away, what did the woman want to get away from? Every possible place of residence on the earth's surface is near some other place. You cannot get far, far away from everywhere. The thing is a physical impossibility. I made an effort to get back to common sense.

"About Tim Gorman's cash register?" I said. "What would you suggest?"

"You mustn't let them do that hateful thing," she said. "You can stop them if you will."

"I don't believe I can," I said. "I'm extraordinarily feeble and ineffectual in every way. In business matters I'm a mere babe."

"Mr. Gorman will listen to you," she said. "He will understand if you explain to him. He is a writer, an artist. He must understand."

I shook my head. Gorman can write. I admit that. His writing is a great deal better than Mrs. Ascher's modelling, though she did do that head of Tim. I do not hail Gorman's novels or his plays as great literature, though they are good. But some of his criticism is the finest thing of its kind that has been published in our time. But Gorman does not look at these matters as Mrs. Ascher does. I do not believe he ever wrote a line in his life without expecting to be paid for it. He would not write at all if he could find any easier and pleasanter way of making money.

There was no use saying that to Mrs. Ascher. All I could do when she asked me to appeal to Gorman's artistic soul was to shake my head. I shook it as decisively as I could.

"And my husband will listen to you," she said.

"My dear lady! wouldn't he be much more likely to listen to you?"