Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1908 (Heft 21))

but it would spur him, perhaps, to recognize the need of being a little of the
world as well as in it. Bit by bit, then, he discovered his indebtedness to
me. He said nothing, wrung my hand, and shut himself in his studio.
Coming home that night, I tapped, according to my habit, on his door.
There was no response. Usually, I should have concluded he was asleep
and passed on to my own studio. But to-night the silence alarmed me. I
opened the door and stepped into the darkness, struck a match and lighted
the gas, overturning as I did so a canvas with my foot. It had been propped
against the easel, alongside another picture, while a third stood on the easel,
and several more were placed against the platform. Turning, I saw the
figure of Edgar sitting in a chair, the head bowed on his breast. He was
dead. His pride had killed him. Pride, and the dread of what he called
prostitution. For the canvases around him showed that he had been facing
the need of having to sell them.
The girl? I have told you how I left her after our return from the
funeral. The position is engraved on my memory, for I never saw her
again; and I have often compared that last sight of her with the first one.
It was in Paris in a tiny walled-in garden, adjoining his studio, under a screen
of vine-leaves, the early summer sunshine creeping between the leaves and
dappling the curves of her body. She was resting from the pose, and was
playing with a black kitten; looking like a kitten herself, a bit of the inex-
haustible youngness and gaiety of this old, old world. It was her pure sweet
animalism that had warmed myfriend's too abstract nature,and given substance
to his dreams. Her flesh was wedded to his spirit, and the children of the
union were his pictures. I neverknew whether he brought her over; it may
well have been so, for she had been a necessity to his creativeness. Or she
may have followed him; for, after her fashion, he too had been necessary to
her. They were, indeed, two children ; she a child of nature, he, of art—the
one complementary to the other. Though, sometimes I fancied, there was
so much of nature in her that, while his spirit lifted, his art dissatisfied, her.
Well, that dull November evening of the funeral, I gave her some
tea and tried to cheer her. But she was pathetically, unapproachably dejected,
like a sick animal; and begged that she might be allowed to stay in his room
and set things to rights. I retired to my studio to think over what could be
done for the girl.
She had had so large a share in the !creation of his pictures, that, now
that he was gone, leaving no relatives, they seemed of right to be hers. Well,
the question could be decided later. It was being decided, while I, tired
out with the sadness of the day, slept. Next morning, when I visited
Edgar’s studio, I found it bare of pictures. A heap of charred fragments in
the stove was all that remained. Felice had disappeared, and I have never
seen her since. To this day, I am in doubt whether she fancied herself to
be carrying out the wishes of the dead, or was revenging upon their
“children” the indifference which Edgar had displayed to their mother in
herself.
“And I,” said Johnson, relighting his pipe, cc find myself wondering

28