"Why would she not let me be? She
had them all in her golden nets: nobles, and princes, and poets, and
soldiers--she swept them in far and wide. She had her empire; why must
she seek out a man who had but his art and his youth, and steal those?
Women are so insatiate, look you; though they held all the world, they
would not rest if one mote in the air swam in sunshine, free of them! It
was the first year I touched triumph that I saw her. They began for the
first time to speak of me; it was the little painting of Cigarette, as
a child of the army, that did it. Ah, God! I thought myself already so
famous! Well, she sent for me to take her picture, and I went. I went
and I painted her as Cleopatra--by her wish. Ah! it was a face for
Cleopatra--the eyes that burn your youth dead, the lips that kiss your
honor blind! A face--my God! how beautiful! She had set herself to gain
my soul; and as the picture grew, and grew, and grew, so my life grew
into hers till I lived only by her breath. Why did she want my life?
she had so many! She had rich lives, great lives, grand lives at her
bidding; and yet she knew no rest till she had leaned down from her
cruel height and had seized mine, that had nothing on earth but the joys
of the sun and the dew, and the falling of night, and the dawning of
day, that are given to the birds of the fields."
His chest heaved with the spasms that with each throe seemed to tear his
frame asunder; still he conquered them, and his words went on; his eyes
fastened on the burning white glare of the wall as though all the beauty
of this woman glowed afresh there to his sight.
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