Of all this Berenice Fleming knew nothing at all. At the same time the building of this splendid mansion eventually awakened her to an understanding of the spirit of art that occupied the center of Cowperwood's iron personality and caused her to take a real interest in him. Before this she had looked on him as a kind of Western interloper coming East and taking advantage of her mother's good nature to scrape a little social courtesy. Now, however, all that Mrs. Carter had been telling her of his personality and achievements was becoming crystallized into a glittering chain of facts. This house, the papers were fond of repeating, would be a jewel of rare workmanship. Obviously the Cowperwoods were going to try to enter society. "What a pity it is," Mrs. Carter once said to Berenice, "that he couldn't have gotten a divorce from his wife before he began all this. I am so afraid they will never be received. He would be if he only had the right woman; but she--"
Mrs. Carter, who had once seen Aileen in Chicago, shook her head doubtfully. "She is not the type," was her comment. "She has neither the air nor the understanding."
"If he is so unhappy with her," observed Berenice, thoughtfully, "why doesn't he leave her? She can be happy without him. It is so silly--this cat-and-dog existence. Still I suppose she values the position he gives her," she added, "since she isn't so interesting herself."
"I suppose," said Mrs. Carter, "that he married her twenty years ago, when he was a very different man from what he is to-day. She is not exactly coarse, but not clever enough. She cannot do what he would like to see done. I hate to see mismatings of this kind, and yet they are so common. I do hope, Bevy, that when you marry it will be some one with whom you can get along, though I do believe I would rather see you unhappy than poor."
This was delivered as an early breakfast peroration in Central Park South, with the morning sun glittering on one of the nearest park lakes. Bevy, in spring-green and old-gold, was studying the social notes in one of the morning papers.
"I think I should prefer to be unhappy with wealth than to be without it," she said, idly, without looking up.
Her mother surveyed her admiringly, conscious of her imperious mood. What was to become of her? Would she marry well? Would she marry in time? Thus far no breath of the wretched days in Louisville had affected Berenice. Most of those with whom Mrs. Carter had found herself compelled to deal would be kind enough to keep her secret. But there were others. How near she had been to drifting on the rocks when Cowperwood had appeared!
"After all," observed Berenice, thoughtfully, "Mr. Cowperwood isn't a mere money-grabber, is he? So many of these Western moneyed men are so dull."
"My dear," exclaimed Mrs. Carter, who by now had become a confirmed satellite of her secret protector, "you don't understand him at all. He is a very astonishing man, I tell you. The world is certain to hear a lot more of Frank Cowperwood before he dies.
You can say what you please, but some one has to make the money in the first place. It's little enough that good breeding does for you in poverty. I know, because I've seen plenty of our friends come down."
In the new house, on a scaffold one day, a famous sculptor and his assistants were at work on a Greek frieze which represented dancing nymphs linked together by looped wreaths. Berenice and her mother happened to be passing. They stopped to look, and Cowperwood joined them. He waved his hand at the figures of the frieze, and said to Berenice, with his old, gay air, "If they had copied you they would have done better."
"How charming of you!" she replied, with her cool, strange, blue eyes fixed on him. "They are beautiful." In spite of her earlier prejudices she knew now that he and she had one god in common--Art; and that his mind was fixed on things beautiful as on a shrine.
He merely looked at her.
"This house can be little more than a museum to me, he remarked, simply, when her mother was out of hearing; "but I shall build it as perfectly as I can. Perhaps others may enjoy it if I do not."
She looked at him musingly, understandingly, and he smiled. She realized, of course, that he was trying to convey to her that he was lonely.
