" Her sentence seemed to indicate the sketches, and
though I caught the inference I did not take it up, having no desire to
discuss them with her just them indeed, if ever.
I merely stared at her and listened. Questions, I felt sure, would be of
little use. It was better she should say her thought in her own way.
"He is one influence, the most recent," she went on slowly, and always
very calmly, "but there are others--deeper layers, as it were--
underneath. If his were the only one, something would happen. But
nothing ever does happen. The others hinder and prevent--as though each
were struggling to predominate."
I had felt it already myself. The idea was rather horrible. I shivered.
"That's what is so ugly about it--that nothing ever happens," she said.
"There is this endless anticipation--always on the dry edge of a result
that never materializes. It is torture. Mabel is at her wits' end, you
see. And when she begged me--what I felt about my sketches--I mean--"
She stammered badly as before.
I stopped her. I had judged too hastily. That queer symbolism in her
paintings, pagan and yet not innocent, was, I understood, the result of
mixture. I did not pretend to understand, but at least I could be
patient.
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