human
Well, are you going to do me the honour of telling me all about it?
gpt
What do you want me to tell you?
human
Just what I ask--all about your coming here. How you get on. What it means to you. Your hopes--your fears, if you have any. I realize, better than you do, perhaps, that this is not a small venture for you to make. I am interested--you understand how interested--to know just the situation.
gpt
I am doing as well as I could expect. Almost every day I have a sitter--sometimes two. My friends are very good; they bring me every one who will come. People seem to like the things I do--some of them.
human
Almost every day you have a sitter! he repeated.
gpt
Do you call that doing well? How long have you been here?
human
Just seven weeks. Yes, I do call that doing well. It takes time to become established, of course. Now that I have made pictures of many of the prominent people others will follow, I'm confident. You know this isn't the portrait season--too many have cameras of their own and are taking snapshots of outdoor scenes, with themselves in the foreground.
gpt
You don't find yourself wishing you had stayed in the city, as I advised?
human
Not a bit. I want more experience first. I want to be able to do work I needn't apologize for when I really begin with a city studio.
gpt
You are doing finished work, in my opinion.
human
Not in mine.
gpt
There is nothing weak about your will,
human
I hope not. I need a strong one.
gpt
Granted, if you mean to persist in making your own way. But I live in hope that when you have demonstrated to your own satisfaction that you are perfectly competent to hew out that way for yourself, you will be willing to let some stouter pair of arms take a turn with the axe.
human
Could anybody take your studio away from you? Even though you don't do it for a living, but only because you adore it, could you be induced to give it up?
gpt
I'm not trying to induce you to give yours up. I'll build a separate one for you right beside mine, any time you say the word, and you shall pursue your avocation in perfect freedom. All I object to is your making the thing your vocation. I know of a better one for you.
human
We went over all this ground--over and over it--before I came away. Why do you come out here and begin it all over again? I don't want to talk about it.
gpt
I came because I had to see for myself what sort of a place you were in. I had a notion that it wasn't good enough. It isn't. You can't be comfortable in it, through the most of the year. Neither can Madam Chase.
human
We can be perfectly comfortable. She spoke quickly and decidedly.
gpt
You know absolutely that I wouldn't sacrifice what is dearest to me in the world for the sake of having my own way. The little house is primitive, but Granny can be made as snug in it as in any stone mansion.
human
The thing may tumble down about your ears in the first high wind.
gpt
It will not. Dr. Burns went over it thoroughly, and says it is much more substantial than it looks.
human
Dr. Burns! May I ask who the gentleman is?
gpt
My neighbour across the street. He is devoted to Granny, and had as many fears as you could have before he tested the house.
human
Is he married?
gpt
Certainly.
human
Thank heaven for that! I'm suspicious of men who are devoted to your grandmother, charming old lady though she is. But, in spite of Dr. Burns's invaluable opinion, I must beg to differ with him. You can't be comfortable in that chicken-coop through the winter.
gpt
I don't know, Charlotte said slowly, sitting up very straight in the twilight, and looking steadily in front of her,
human
No right to care? Not the right of an old friend? Charlotte, you wouldn't deny me that? Why, child, I saw you grow up. I was your father's trusted friend, in spite of being much younger than he. And I'm not so much older than you, after all--only fifteen years. You might at least let me play at being elder brother to you.
gpt
I did let you play that for a long, long time. It was only when--
human
Only when I began to intimate that the relation wasn't fully satisfying that you began to give me the cold shoulder. You haven't even written to me since you've been here. Are you aware of that?
gpt
There was nothing to write. And I've been very busy.
human
Charlotte, said he, presently,
gpt
Then I take it back. You have a certain right, it's true. You have been a good friend, and I owe you much. It's because I'm foolishly sensitive about this little cottage. I can see, of course, that it looks like a poor place to a man who lives in one of the finest houses in the State of Maryland, but I can't let that influence me. If you happened to be the sort of man who loves to go off into the woods and live in a log shack for a whole hunting-season you'd understand its charm for me. I don't in the least mind washing my face in a tin basin. You do mind.
human
Not when you offer it. But it's not the tin basin I object to. That is--
gpt
It _is_ the tin basin. You don't like to see a woman live in such a plain way. But I tell you this, Mr. Brant: she can be just as much a woman of refinement--
human
My dear girl--
gpt
Yes, I lost my temper for a minute, she admitted.
human
I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't offend you by implying that you don't know it. What I mean is that the luxuries you consider essential are not essential. I was brought up among them. I loved them as you do. It is good for me to do without them--I am conscious of it every day. I shall be a stronger woman and a better woman if I can learn not to care.
gpt
But you haven't wholly learned yet.
human
She flung it at him.
gpt
I don't mind living in this simple way, except when a man like you comes along and tries, deliberately tries, to make me conscious of it.
human
Charlotte, forgive me! It is because I long so to take you away from it, to give you the sort of home you have known in the old days. It fits you so well--that sort of home. You were a princess in the old home; you would be a queen in a new one.
gpt
Oh, don't!
human
All right, I won't.