The Amouretta landscape, and other stories

If you search from Greenwich Village to Lawrence Park, and then from Turtle Bay to Chelsea, you will not find in all New York a painter less spoiled by fame than Maurice Price. It was in his nature to know from the very first that the luckier you are, the kinder you can be. I do not regard it as a limitation that in what he does and in what he wears he scarcely satisfies the romantic ideal about artists and their ways. There is nothing wild in his attire, and he does not live more dangerously than other citizens must. Still, there is something about his type of good looks that sets him apart and gives him away. Those who see him for the first time, in profile, whether at the Follies or at a funeral of an Academician, sometimes think that if they knew the man, they would esteem him more than they would love him. That is because they have not yet met him in front view, and discovered the eager friendliness in his gray eyes, the[2] sensitive, listening expression of his whole face; the look that says, «Tell me your joke in life, and I'll tell mine.»